When, for the second time that day, Slike recovered consciousness, Billy showed him the butcher knife.
"How many butcher knives did you take from Walton's?" he demanded.
"One," replied Slike.
"And is this the one?"
"Sure it is. Why not?"
"Why, hells bells!" exclaimed Billy, "then you didn't kill Rafe Tuckleton."
"First I knew he was dead," Slike said thoughtfully. "As a rule, I don't kill my customers," he added, with a grin rendered more horrible by his battered and bloody features. "I can't afford to. Maybe you killed him yourself. How about it? Aw, right! Go to hell then! And I want to say right here you tied my arms and legs too tight! There ain't no feelin' in any of 'em!"
Billy paid Slike no further attention. His brain seemed to find it difficult to function. "She said he only took one knife," he told himself stupidly and sat down to think it over.
He had caught Slike. But he was no nearer the solution of the Tuckleton murder than he was in the beginning. His theory that Slike had killed Tuckleton was smashed to smithereens by the discovery of the Walton butcher knife in Slike's bootleg. Unless Slike had taken two knives. But Slike had not taken two knives. According to Hazel's testimony, he had taken only one.
It was then that Billy suddenly realized that he should have known better in the first place than to connect Slike with the murder of Tuckleton. Dan Slike was too experienced a longhorn to leave incriminating evidence behind him if he could help it. And if he had killed Tuckleton, he would at least have taken away the handle of the knife. But the handle had been left beside the body for any one to pick up. Manifestly, then, it had been left there with the design to throw suspicion upon a person other than the murderer,—for instance, a person intimately connected with the Walton ranch.