Borden Chantry Read Free Page B

wait a little while. Yet somehow he was reluctant to commit the man to the earth. Such a man must have a home…He kept himself too well to be just a drifter.
    The door opened and Doc Terwilliger came in. “Is that the man?”
    â€œIt is. Look at him, Doc. There’s something wrong. That man’s mighty well dressed in frontier style. I mean his clothes fit…he’s had them made for him. He’s got a gun that’s seen use. He’s wearin’ spurs that look like Mexico or California, and most of the riders around here these days are Kansas or Missouri boys with a few drifters from Texas. He’s been out in the sun…you can see that. His gun ain’t been fired lately but it’s cared for. Seems to me the only thing that don’t look right is that shirt. I can’t see a man who dresses as careful as him wearin’ a shirt two sizes too big.”
    Doc Terwilliger was forty-five, with twenty years of it in army service, and there was little he had not seen.
    â€œI was just settin’ here, Doc, wondering how you’d get a shirt off a dead man who’s prob’ly started to stiffen up.”
    â€œLet’s get the coat off first. He’s not as stiff as you’d expect. Here…lend a hand.”
    Lifting the dead man they worked his arms from the sleeves and got the buckskin coat off. Doc examined it thoughtfully, then handed it to Borden Chantry.
    He held the coat up. There was a little blood on the back, but very little, considering the wound had been in the front. And there was no bullet hole.
    â€œI’ll be damned!” he said. “Looks like the bullet never got through.”
    â€œIt did though,” Doc said grimly. “Look here a minute.” With his surgical scissors he cut the shirt up the back and they took it off. Doc tilted the body on one side and they looked at it. Doc’s face was grim.
    â€œShot twice,” he said, “the first one in the back at point-blank range. See? The powder burns? And scattered grains of powder penetrated the skin.
    â€œThat shot was supposed to kill him, but it didn’t. See here? He was shot a second time, and from the trajectory the killer was either lying on the floor shooting up or he was standing up as the supposedly dead man started to rise off the floor. I’d say the latter.”
    â€œOnly one bullet hole in the shirt,” Borden said. “Doc, d’ you figure whoever it was shot this man, but not wanting it to look like he was shot in the back, he switched shirts, taking off the one the dead man had and substituting another that was too large? He was probably planning on shooting the dead man again, and then the victim started to sit up, and he shot him…killed him…although he would have died from the first shot.
    â€œThen he put the man’s coat on him and dropped the body where it would look like he was killed in a drunken fight.”
    Doc nodded. “That sounds right, Bord. This was deliberate, cold-blooded murder, the way I see it.”
    â€œI reckon so…I reckon so.”
    â€œWhat’re you going to do, Bord?”
    Chantry shrugged. “Doc, a killin’ when both men are armed and responsible is one thing. Outright murder’s another. I’m never going to quit until we get this man in jail.”
    â€œBord, think of what you’re facing. We’ve only a few hundred people in town, but there’s over a hundred miners and prospectors around, and probably fifty or sixty cowboys and drifters. Why, the man who did this is long gone.”
    â€œNo,” Borden Chantry spoke slowly. “I don’t think so, Doc. No drifter would have bothered to cover it up like this. He’d just have run. He’d have got him a horse and pulled his stakes.
    â€œThis here is murder, all right, an’ I’m bettin’ the man who done it is still around!”
    â€œThen be careful, Bord. Be very careful.