“To the inquest. They made me serve. Samson called a jury right off so they could move the body home. The dead man's mammy didn't want it to lie thar all night.”
“Good Lord! Jury? Dead man? Why, what's happened, Jim?”
“Oh, come off! You don't mean you hain't heard the news?” The rider had dismounted and was leading his horse through the gate to the steps on which the landlord now stood. “Why, Tom, Dan Willis has gone to his last accountin'. The Webb children, out pickin' huckleberries, come across his remains on the Treadwell road a mile t'other side o' Wilks's store. At first it was thought he'd met his death by bein' throwed from his colt, fer somebody seed it loose with saddle an' bridle on, but when we examined the body we found a bullet-hole over the heart.”
“Good Lord! Who done it, Jim?”
Carson's heart was in his mouth; his breath was held; there was a pause which seemed without end.
“Done it hisself, Tom. The jury had no difficulty comin' to that decision from ample evidence. He'd tuck his pocket-knife an' stuck up an envelope with his name on it agin a tree, an', half drunk, as we judged from his flask, he was shootin' at it over the head of a young colt that hain't been broke a month. Dan must have had the devil in 'im, an' was determined to train the animal to stand under fire, fer we seed whar the dirt was pawed up powerful all around. We calculated that the colt got to buckin' an' to keep from bein' throwed off Dan turned his gun the wrong way. Anyhow, he's no more.”
“Yes, an' I reckon a body ought to respect the dead, good or bad,” said the landlord; “but there won't be a river of tears shed, Jim. That fellow was a living threat to law and order.”
“Yes, I have heard that he was the chap that shot Carson Dwight the night he saved that nigger from the mob.”
“Sh! He's up-stairs now,” The landlord lowered his voice.
“You don't say! Sort o' out of his beat, ain't he?”