‘It’s Palto,’ they heard the boy say.
The young Mexican was on the ground. The point dawning in Bob Leadley’s brain was that it would have been so much better, simpler, if one or both of Letchie’s shots had finished the job. Palto was down to pray—kneeling on the sand-blown, half-obliterated road. Welton jerked his horse so close, it looked as if he meant to trample the boy, before he stepped down. With his boot he shoved the figure over on its side.
‘So it was you who did the hammering on old man Batten’s skull—’
‘Yo, no, señor!’
Not a man looking up, but the ashes of a boy—fag and fright all that was left.
‘Weren’t even there, were you? Home in bed all night. Just started out for a morning ride with Marguerin and Rueda—’
‘Si, señor—was there, but no kill—’
Letchie turned his thin smile to the others. ‘I guess you’ve heard that. I guess we’ve got what we came for. I guess we’ve heard from his own lips, he was one of the three.’
Bob Leadley wasn’t right in his own head; he knew just enough to know that one thing. He saw his son looking down at Palto. He saw—a kind of humor about it—that Bart hadn’t mixed in the pursuit with any sacred idea of the law’s vengeance. Now the upshot of the whole matter from Letchie Welton:
‘... accordin’ to law, we can’t finish him here and be done with it. Bein’ still alive, we’ve got to fix to take him back to where a court is. Only if he should try to escape—we could put a bullet through him; but he won’t do that, will you, Palto?’