Curt Bellew, still looking for the missing Slim, ran into Honey Bee. It seemed that everybody in town knew by this time that Slim was missing.
“Aw, he was at the HJ all night,” said Honey. “He was goin’ home, all right, Curt, but somebody bent a gun over his head. By golly, we had quite a shootin’ scrape out there! Somebody emptied a gun at Hashknife Hartley, but didn’t touch him.”
“Honey, you ain’t lyin’, are yuh?” asked Curt. There were several interested listeners.
“I shore ain’t, Curt,” declared Honey. “Slim needed a little patchin’ up, but he’s all right.”
“Where is he now?”
“I can’t tell yuh, Curt—because I don’t know m’self.”
Several questions were fired at Honey, but he had the same answer for each. In the meantime Curt went back to Kelsey’s office and asked him whether he had heard about the shooting at the HJ.
“What shootin’, Curt?”
Curt told him what Honey had said about it.
“Why would anybody hit Slim Coleman?” asked Kelsey.