“Oh, you didn’t know he was left-handed, then?” Johnny sneered. “You wouldn’t! You never know! Coroners just don’t. They’re the lowest form of political infamy. All I got to know about a man is that he’s hired out to do a job of coronering to know that there ain’t no help for him.”
Gallup’s teeth fairly chattered with rage. Face working convulsively, he turned to the body as Johnny pointed to it.
“Look at the man’s pants, you old mossback!” Johnny exclaimed, excitedly. “Ain’t they all wore shiny on the left side just below the pocket? Nothing but the rubbin’ of his holster against that leg did that. And that worn-out place beside the pocket—the butt of his gun made that! Roll him over, Ritter, and let this poor old imbecile have a good look.”
Doc rolled the body so that they could see if this was so. Gallup’s face was red with rage. Was this upstart cow-puncher going to cheapen him and make his work ridiculous? Election wasn’t so far away, said Ritter’s eyes. Gallup caught the thought.
Old Kent was wringing his hands. Hobe and Tony said nothing, but their set faces were proof enough that Johnny Dice had dropped a bombshell.
No one seemed willing to break the silence which had crept over them. It grew so still that Gallup’s little throat noises sounded loud and ominous. He was weighing matters quite beyond the present trouble with Johnny.
“Well, Johnny,” he said at last in a tone very different from the one he had previously used, “there may be sense in your contention. No one can say what was so with a dead man and be sure of it. I never seen him wearin’ a gun; you never seen him, either. Tell me why anybody’d want to kill him. Sure wasn’t robbery.”
“Might have been robbery,” Johnny replied. “Forty-six dollars ain’t no money for a man to have on him in this country. It would have been a fine stall to have taken his roll and left that measly forty-six. And then, too, maybe somebody figured he had somethin’ on them. Might be a dozen reasons.”
“You don’t suspect any one, do you, Johnny?” Doc asked.
“You don’t have to suspect somebody to prove that murder’s been done.”