"You lie quiet," directed Riley Tyler. "If you go busting those bandages open, I'll bust you. Lie back, lie down, and take it easy. There's nothing for you to get excited over. Everything's all right. Yeah. That's the boy. Do as Uncle says."
"What's the writing, Bill?" inquired Shotgun. "Read her off."
Billy read:
JUDGE HIRAM DONELSON,
Hillsville.
DEAR SIR:—The man who killed Rafe Tuckleton is the county prosecutor Arthur Rale. Rale owed Tuckleton five thousand dollars on a note and couldn't pay it. Rafe wanted his money. Early in the evening on the day he was killed, Tuckleton came to Rale's house where I was at the time, and demanded payment. He brought the note with him. Rale refused and they quarreled. Tuckleton had been drinking. Before Tuckleton left, he said he was going to the Walton ranch. After he left, Rale told me he had planned some time ago to kill Tuckleton and get the note back at the first opportunity. This looked like a good opportunity. Rale showed me a butcher knife. He said it was just like one at the Walton ranch. He had cut Tom Walton's initials on the handle so it would be like it. Rale said he had tried to get the original knife, but had not been able to. This one he had fixed up had to do. He said when his knife was found on Rafe's body, everybody would think Hazel Walton had killed him, and nobody would believe her if she said the knife wasn't hers. He had it in for Hazel anyway, he said, and by rubbing out Rafe and laying the blame on her, he'd win two bets at one throw. Suppose they found the regular Walton knife, I said. Rale said it wouldn't make any difference. Anybody might know she could easy have two knives. Well, he offered me two hundred dollars cash to kill Rafe with this knife. I wouldn't do it, so he had a couple of drinks and said he'd kill Rafe himself. He asked me to go with him. I went, and we hung around Walton's till Tuckleton came out, and then we followed him, and Rale stopped him down the draw and said, I've got the money for you, Rafe. And Tuckleton got off his horse and then Rale stepped up close to him and let him have it. He stuck the knife in him a couple of times after Tuckleton was down and wriggling round. When Tuckleton was dead, Rale took the note out of Tuckleton's pocketbook, and I held Rale up and took the note away from him. I thought maybe I might want to show him up some day, or sell it to him or something, when he got hold of some money. I was going to make him pay for it, one way or another.
Here is the note he took off Tuckleton.
The district attorney will tell you who I am if I don't, so I haven't any objections to signing my name. I'll be in Old Mexico by the time you read this, anyway. So long, and give Rale what he deserves.
Yours truly,
(Signed) JACK MURRAY.
Billy handed the letter and the Rale note to Shotgun Shillman, who folded both carefully and slipped them into an inner pocket of his vest. "And did you hear Rale say these were his private property?"
Shotgun Shillman nodded happily. "Even without 'em, there is enough evidence to hang him. But there's nothing like swinging a wide loop if you want to rope two at a clatter."