“He’s top hand in a big honkatonk here. Owns the place. I sprung the bootleg thing on him and he flinched; but he shook out of the loop pretty quick and denied everythin’. I admitted I might be mistaken; but he knows I ain’t, and he knows I know it. Got a few gunmen workin’ for him. Somebody has scared the sheriff out of the country, and tried to scare the county judge, but he don’t scare. Tin-horn gambler got shot by a half-breed a few days ago, but they got the breed. Old Man Moran owns the Big 4, and his wayward son is in love with this half-breed’s sister. Yesterday they found eight Big 4 steers dead on this squaw-man’s place, but before they got the sheriff out to see the evidence, somebody skinned out the brands. And that’s about all there is, Sleepy.”
Sleepy sighed deeply and rolled a cigaret.
“I’m shore glad,” he said slowly. “I tell you I was scared there might be trouble over here, and that you’d get your long nose into it. Didja get the twenty-five from Moran?”
“Y’betcha.”
Sleepy smoked slowly, eyeing the main street of Turquoise City.
“Didja meet young Moran?” he asked.
“Nope. Regan, the foreman of the Big 4, told me a lot about him. Wild young Irishman, I reckon. Busted with his father, they say. Took the money his mother left him and bought a ranch here. Too much liquor and cards have put him on the rocks, but he’s still a wild go-devil. Sent word to his father to mind his own damn business.
“The sheriff is a character, Sleepy. You’ll like him. He ain’t got a brain in his head, and he’s got a deputy that don’t know there ever was a Civil War—and don’t care. This sheriff was a deputy just long enough to learn how to pin his badge on right side up. There’s nobody to show ’em what to do. I met the prosecuting attorney. Queer looking jigger, named Ryker. Wears celluloid cuffs and a collar two sizes too big. Ex-assayer. Still owns the assay office here.
“They tell me that the judge is an old-timer here. Lives alone, with a crippled Chinese cook. Square as a dollar, drinks like a fish and thinks the town needs cleanin’.”
“What about this half-breed girl?” asked Sleepy.