Brick shook his head slowly.
“Don’t look like it, that’s a cinch. Somebody beat his head all up.”
“Somebody—yeah.” It was an old cattleman from the southern end of the range. “I’d admire to know jist who that somebody was.”
The man who went after the doctor had shouted the news in at the Short Horn, and the stable soon filled with curious and interested people. Doctor Bridger came bustling in and the crowd gave him room. His examination was short and to the point.
“Been dead quite a while. Skull crushed. Who found him?”
Doctor Bridger was the coroner. The youth shouldered his way inside the circle.
“I found him, Doc. I—I thought he was out some’rs, playin’ poker, and I finds him in that danged old oat-bin. I told the sheriff jist as quick as I could.”
“I reckon he did,” agreed Brick. “He was still packin’ his oat-can with him.”
“But why would any one kill Jimmy McKeever?” Thus Banty Harrison indignantly. “Jimmy was a good guy.”
“Didn’t have an enemy that I ever heard about,” offered Slim Hunter. “By gosh, this country is gettin’ too salty to suit me. Mostly every day there’s a robbery, a killin’ or a dynamitin’. Makes a feller scared to do anythin’, I tell yuh.”