Obviously the Tuckleton murder and the O'Gorman murder were parallel cases. In both, clues had been left to manufacture circumstantial evidence against the wrong person. While it did not necessarily follow that the same brain and hands had planned and carried out both murders, yet the point was worth considering. For it was absolutely necessary to lay at least Tuckleton's murderer by the heels. There were no two ways about that. Because if he were not caught, it would only be a matter of time before Rale, by reason of his peculiar temperament, would recover from his fright, decide to risk the wrath to come, and once more turn the cold light of suspicion upon Hazel Walton. And that would entail her arrest sooner or later. Indeed, to Billy Wingo the future bore the appearance of a mighty boggy ford.
Mechanically he began to play mumbletypeg with the butcher knife—palm of hand, back of hand, right fist, left fist, and had progressed as far as his left pinky in the movement known as off fingers of each hand when he sat back and stared at the knife quivering in the turf. He thought he saw a gleam of light. The very fact of the two knives, each a match of the other, was as obvious a contrariety as any that ever delighted the soul of Mr. William Noy. Attaching to the demise of Rafe Tuckleton was another contrariety, several others in fact. Billy checked off the various contrarieties on his fingers. The gleam of light became a ray, the ray broadened to the bright light of complete understanding.
He hugged his knees and smiled the pleasant self-satisfied smile of the proverbial cat that has just received the canary into its midst. "I got him! I got him where the hair is short. It's one complete cinch."
Early one morning several days later the sheriff pro tem. of Crocker County was roused by rappings on the office door. Being an experienced man, Shotgun Shillman did not open the front door. He went round the back way with his gun in his hand. But his caution was needless. For, on circling the house, he found no one at the front door but Dan Slike—a hatless Dan Slike flat on his back in the dust, tied hand and foot, and with a gag in his mouth. Looped around Dan's ankles was one end of a lariat. At the other end of the lariat stood Hazel Walton's riding horse.
Later in the day Guerilla Melody called on Nate Samson, asked the storekeeper several apparently aimless questions and leafed through the cutlery pages of Nate's hardware catalogue. Still later in the day Johnny Dawson rode out of Golden Bar. Only two people besides himself knew that he was bound for the railroad and a telegraph line.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CONTRARIETIES
"There's a lot of this stuff I don't understand," said Guerilla Melody the day after Dawson's return from the railroad. "Why did Conley go south? Reelfoot and he were almighty friendly. Got drunk together and everything. And Conley ain't committed any crime round here that I know of."
"I'm betting he did, alla same," said Billy. "Or else why was he so particular to tell those TU boys he was from Arizona? Folks don't hide where they come from without a reason. We know there have been two murders committed here by unknown murderers. It never occurred to me till you said Conley hadn't committed any crime that you know of that maybe—" He left the sentence unfinished.