“I won’t want any money, Doc,” drawled Johnny. “A good horse and a pair of well-oiled guns are all I’ll need. I’m goin’ to find out who killed this man. How about it, Tony?”
“Eef you say so, Johnny, she’s so wit’ me.”
“Go to it, you young fool!” Aaron managed to articulate. “Kelsey’s in Reno. He’ll be back next week. Go see him! Maybe he’ll make you special investigator for this county.”
“I don’t have to see no prosecutin’ attorney!” Johnny’s words clicked off his tongue. “What I do, I’ll do on my own. If this man was murdered—by God, I’m goin’ to find out who killed him! It’ll be time enough to talk of seein’ Kelsey then!”
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST CLEW
Scanlon’s fear that the night was ruined as far as he was concerned proved well founded. Gallup paused to buy himself a drink. Kent and his foreman came down as the coroner went out. Hobe’s face was glum. The old man’s run-in with Johnny and his pal was only another evidence of his coming decay. For all of his fault, Johnny was a good man, and a better vaquero than Madeiras was not to be found this side of the Humboldt. Kent might figure that, come spring, they would be back asking to be taken on again. Hobe knew better than this. Johnny’s pride more than matched his temper.
Times there had been in the past when old Jackson Kent had not balked at winking an eye at the law. This present deference to it nettled Hobe. The Diamond-Bar was big and powerful enough to lay down its own law. No one more than Ferris had built up its traditions. A few men there are like him who can become so much a part of their work that a subconscious sense of ownership of the tools with which they toil takes possession of them. It was that way with Hobe. He was the Diamond-Bar.
Kent’s daughter, Molly, had healed some previous sore spots between the foreman and the old man, but this arbitrary handling of the Diamond-Bar men was poaching on authority long since held by the foreman. Kent would have been hard put to have found a way to hurt the man more.
“You better git the boys to bed,” the old man said.
Hobe’s face was sullen.