“Good. I’m the man they’re after. Go home, Jane, and forget it all. I don’t blame yuh.”
“Is he dead?” she asked.
“I think so, but I didn’t take time to examine him. Here’s yore car. Good-bye and good luck, Jane.”
He turned and walked swiftly away before the car arrived, but he saw her board it and ride away. Blaze Nolan knew that he was in a dangerous position. He realised that Marsh had no doubt told the butler who he was; and if Marsh was dead, the law would give short shrift to an ex-convict, who was merely out on parole.
But even with the tragedy so close behind him, and the danger of arrest ahead of him, he stopped to roll a cigarette and smile grimly at the irony of fate. The girl was Jane Kelton of Painted Valley, the girl who was to have married Blaze Nolan, and for whose brother’s death he had been sentenced to hard labour for ten years.
“I reckon I better start walkin’,” he told himself. “They’ll watch every exit out of this town, that’s a cinch. I’ll head for San Berdoo, and if nothin’ goes wrong, I can grab a boxcar down to Yuma. I’m in a sweet position for a parolled convict. If I don’t report, they’ll send me back, and if I do report, I’ll get arrested for shootin’ Marsh. But I’ll take a chance and go back to Painted Valley, if they don’t stop me.”
As he started across the street he heard the wailing of a siren. Stepping back in the shadow of a tree, he watched a police automobile, red lighted, sounding its weird warning, careening along toward the Marsh estate.
“Well, there’s one nice thing about them policemen,” he said. “They shore don’t sneak up on yuh. Me for the sagebrush and mesquite.”
But Kendall H. Marsh was not dead. The bullet had struck him over the right temple and cut a furrow around the side of his head about five inches long, and he was still unconscious when the ambulance arrived.
The very discreet butler knew nothing. As far as the police were able to learn from him, Marsh was alone and had been alone all the evening. The butler had heard the shot fired, found Marsh sprawled across the desk, but no one else in the room.