Sheriff on the Spot (18 page)

Sam Sloan was slumped back against the counter when Pat reappeared in the doorway. He regarded Pat glumly, and stiffened when he saw Joe Deems come through the doorway with Kitty on his arm.

Kitty lowered her head and avoided Sam's dark gaze. She had on more rouge than last night and her eyes held a defiant gleam when she looked at Pat.

He said, “I reckon you both know Sam. We're goin' upstairs.”

Kitty started to speak, then went on past Pat silently but with heightened color. Sam drew back to let her pass, and nodded evenly to Deems. He muttered, “Hello, Joe,” and tugged his Stetson lower on his forehead.

“What are we going upstairs for?” Deems demanded of Pat. “I don't see that anything can be gained—”

“I think we'll settle this whole thing pretty fast. We'll all go up to number fifteen.”

Pat waited for Joe and Kitty to precede them, then nodded to Morgan and Sam, and they went up together.

Deems and Kitty stopped outside the door of number 15. When the others came up to them, Deems explained, “Kitty moved out of this room last night. Except for that everything is just like it was when Ralston was murdered.”

Pat said, “I reckoned she wouldn't want to keep on sleepin' in here. Not many women would.” He stepped inside and struck a match, lit the lamp on the bureau.

“All of you come in,” he invited the group waiting nervously on the threshold. “We ain't got any body, but there's some blood to show right where he was lying.”

Kitty entered hesitantly. She held her head high and walked straight across the room like a sleepwalker. Sam followed her in. His dark face was grim and dejected, and he began angrily, “Damn it, Pat. Ain't none of this gonna do no good.”

Pat said, “I think it will.” He sounded very cheery as his gaze searched the ceiling and the front wall of the room.

When Deems and Morgan were inside, Pat explained to them, “There's two or three things I ain't got quite straight on this. Those chairs are still right where they were.” He indicated the chairs on each side of the low table that had held the tray and whisky bottle the preceding night.

“That where you an' Kitty were sittin' when the man walked in on you?” he asked Sam.

Sam grimaced angrily. “Yeh. But—”

“That right, Miss Kitty?” Pat's voice was low but urgent.

She nodded lifelessly without looking at him. “Yes. We' were sitting in those chairs having a drink. There wasn't anything—”

“That's plenty,” Pat interjected hastily. He took hold of Sam's arm and led him back to the chairs. “This fellow came in that side door an' started cussin' you. That it?”

Sam nodded.

“An' Kitty screamed that he was her husband,” Pat went on composedly, “an' he started for you, still cussin'. An' you figured he was lookin' for trouble so you pulled your shootin' iron an' triggered it two or three times?”

“I was too drunk to hit him,” Sam protested weakly. “Even with him that close.”

“Where'd the bullets go?” Pat asked quietly.

Sam stared at him in bewilderment. “In yonder wall, I reckon. Or up in the ceiling.”

Pat said to Morgan, “Do you see any bullet holes in that wall or ceilin'?”

“I sure don't,” Morgan said excitedly.

“Nor in the floor nor no place else,” Pat pointed out. “Funny kind of bullets, huh? I never knew 'em not to hit some place before when they were shot out of a forty-five inside a closed room.”

A moment of dead silence followed his drawled pronouncement. Then Deems offered sharply:

“He must have been too drunk to realize he'd hit Ralston. Probably jumped him with his knife before he could fall over. I bet you'll find those missing bullets inside Ralston's corpse.”

Pat looked at Morgan. “How about it, Harold?”

The rancher cleared his throat and shook his head. “I was at the undertaker's when he laid the body out. He wasn't shot. Not even once. There were two knife holes. One in front and one in his back.”

A startled exhalation of breath came from Kitty's red lips. She sank back on the bed and covered her face with her hands as Pat turned on her.

He studied her for a moment with compassion, then walked to the door and put his back against it.

“It's time all of us quit coverin' up things an' told all the truth,” he warned them. “I'll start with my part of it. You listen close, Sam. An' keep your big mouth shut till I ask you a question. You ain't goin' to like some of this, but you're goin' to hear it. Maybe you've already guessed,” he went on to Deems and Kitty, “that I had a confab with Fred Ralston in my office last evenin' right after he got off the stage.”

17

“That's how-come,” Pat went on calmly, “that Jeth Purdue got locked up in jail. He came in right after Ralston left my office, an' got wringy when I told him I'd decided to hold onto the sheriff's badge a few hours longer.

“Fred Ralston thought he was talkin' to the new sheriff,” Pat went on carefully. “He'd never seen either one of us, an' he'd been told Purdue would be in charge of the sheriff's office when the stage came in. I didn't tell him different because I got plumb interested by the time he'd talked a little bit. He mentioned a plan that'd been cooked up between him an' Kitty an' Joe Deems. An' he mentioned a sucker with eight thousand cash money.”

The Powder Valley sheriff paused and studied the occupants of the room one by one. Harold Morgan was listening with an intent frown, seeking to add up what Pat was saying to what he already knew. Sam Sloan had a black scowl on his face and was making a job of not looking at Kitty who was sitting erect on the bed, listening with strained attention.

Joe Deems cleared his throat and said angrily, “I don't know what all this foolishness is about. Sounds to me like you're making up a batch of lies. Fred Ralston is dead and can't speak for himself.”

Pat said, “You know they're not lies, Joe. Even if I haven't got anybody to back me up, I got better proof. When Ralston came over here, he told you an' Kitty that he'd checked with the new sheriff an' everything was fixed. You were after Sam's money, an' I reckon you were goin' to split it four ways. Or maybe you an' your husband were goin' to get the biggest part,” Pat added to Kitty. “Seein' how you'd worked it all out between you.”

She wet her lips and sent an agonized glance at Sam who was staring down at the floor and sweating profusely. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she said faintly. “I didn't have anything planned. I didn't know Fred was coming.”

Pat laughed scornfully. “He asked the clerk for number fifteen. The room right next to yours. An' you had the door unlocked for him to walk in when you got things fixed right with Sam.”

“I don't want to hear no more.” Sam stepped forward angrily. “I killed Fred Ralston. I'm not denyin' it. Mebby I'll hang. I don't reckon it matters much. Why don't you lock me up?”

“That's right, Sheriff,” Joe Deems broke in. “These absurd accusations of yours mean absolutely nothing. Sam Sloan confesses he killed Ralston. Nothing else matters.”

“But,
how
did he kill him? There's those bullets that disappeared in thin air. In Powder Valley it makes a difference whether a man dies of lead-poisonin' or of gettin' knifed in the back. A hell of a difference to a jury,” he added emphatically. “So I reckon we better find out about those missin' bullets.”

“Mebby I didn't even shoot,” Sam put in hoarsely. “Mebby I jest thought I did.”

Pat shook his head. “Ezra heard the shots in this room. Three of 'em. He'll swear to that. Let's go back to yesterday afternoon. You drank some in the afternoon. Got kind of drunk, 'cording to what Ezra says. Then Kitty made up to you in the saloon an' suggested you come up to her room for a drink.
Didn't she?”

When Sam set his lips grimly and didn't answer, Pat swung on the entertainer. “You admit that's what you did, don't you?”

“Sure I admit it,” she cried wildly. “What of it? I told you yesterday I was crazy about Sam. I was—well, I was hoping he'd ask me to marry him.”

“An' you already with one husband?”

“I—I thought maybe we could go away where Fred would never find us. I've never really been married to Fred. I hadn't seen him for years. I didn't think of him as my husband.” Red suffused Kitty's face. She lowered her head and began to cry softly.

Sam took a step toward her, his dark face contorted with pain. Pat shook his head at him sharply. “Wait till you hear all of it, Sam. Then if you still feel the same way I won't say a word.

“Sam an' Kitty came up here for a drink,” he went on harshly. “An' in the meantime, her husband had checked into the room next door. She knew that. She knew he was in there listenin' at the keyhole. He told me it was all planned out.

“She fed Sam some more whisky out of the bottle an' got him good an' drunk. They were in here drinkin' quite a while, as you can tell by countin' the brown-paper cigarette butts on the tray. An' you did get him to propose marriage,” Pat went on angrily to Kitty. “You sweetened up to him while he was drunk, an' he started kissin' you. An' right then—your husband walked in.”

Pat stopped and looked at Sam scornfully. “Can't you see it was a put-up job? Of all the times in the world, for him to walk in just the minute you were kissin' Kitty. Not a minute too late or a minute too soon. She an' him had the whole thing planned,” he went on remorselessly. “She'd been workin' you up to just that point for months. When she figured she had you ripe, she wrote to Denver for him to come on.”

Kitty gave a little cry and sank sideways on the bed, covering her shamed face with her hands. Sam's face turned a grayish color and his mouth was clamped bitterly shut.

“Nothin' but the old badger game,” Pat went on wearily. “With a few extra touches. They knew you an' Ezra were too tough to pay off just because you'd been caught kissin' a man's wife, so they fixed it for you to think you'd killed him.
That
made it different. A killin' like that is awful close to murder—an' no man wants to get up in court an' have that kind of story told on him.”

Joe Deems said coldly, “You've certainly worked out an amazing theory, Sheriff Stevens. Ralston would have been the biggest fool on earth to walk in here unarmed and provoke a man to shoot at him.”

“Sure he would,” Pat conceded quietly. “An' Fred Ralston wasn't that kind of fool. Not by a long shot.” He swung on Sam. “Start thinkin' back. When you first come in with Kitty, she made some excuse to get hold of your gun, didn't she?”

Sam's face was haggard. He nodded slowly. “Come to think of it, she did. Claimed she wanted to look at it while I poured a drink. But she give it back to me right afterward,” he added defensively.

“Sure she did. After she'd unloaded it.”

“But it was loaded. It shot all right. Hell, you've got three of the cartridges in your pocket right now.”

“That's right.” Pat Stevens reached inside a pocket in his jacket and drew out the three bullets he'd taken from Sam's .45 that morning. A length of white lisle stocking came out with the bullets. Pat looked at it and grinned crookedly. He held it up by the top and asked Kitty, “Ever seen this before?”

She sat up slowly, taking her hands away from her face as though she dreaded to look. She began, “Why it's one of my—” and stopped abruptly.

Pat nodded. “One of your good stockin's. Only, it ain't good for much now. Not with the foot cut off.” He laid it aside. “We'll talk about that directly. Right now, we'll talk about these here bullets.” He handed one of them to Sam and another to Harold Morgan, directing, “Try the heft of them.”

Both of them began trying the weight of the bullets in the palms of their hands. Thoroughly familiar with .45 ammunition, a bemused expression quickly came over both their faces.

“Light as a feather, 'most,” Morgan ejaculated. He held it up to examine it, then excitedly reached in his pocket for a knife.

“That's right,” Pat encouraged him. “Try your knife on the bullet part. It's real light wood—painted over to look like lead. It'd fly all into little pieces if you tried to shoot it out of a gun. That's what Kitty put in your six-gun before she gave it back to you yesterday,” he added to Sam. “Fred Ralston didn't reckon he was walkin' into no danger when he came in here. You were supposed to be so drunk you'd think he was dead when he fell down after you shot. But I reckon he didn't fall fast enough,” he added grimly.

Deems was looking at Kitty in utter amazement. “Is this true, Kitty? Did you plan all that with your husband?”

“You were in on it too,” Pat told him. “You an' Jeth both. They needed your help to put it over. What messed everything up,” Pat went on stridently, “was Sam not bein' too drunk to notice Ralston didn't fall fast enough after he shot—and him havin' a huntin' knife in a leg sheath. I reckon you didn't know he always carried a knife too,” he added to Kitty. “Or you'd tried to get that away from him before your husband came in.”

“It was awful,” she cried brokenly. “Everything went just right, but—before I could stop him Sam had that knife out in his hand and was going after Fred.”

“I figured it happened like that.” Pat sighed. “An' that clears up a lot of things. It would of been better,” he added severely to Kitty, “if you'd left real bullets in Sam's gun. A jury might let him off for shootin' a man like that in the excitement, but stabbin' him in the back is goin' to be different. Just because of that,” he ended sadly, “I reckon he'll swing from a cottonwood tree.”

A spasm of horror contorted Kitty's face. “You don't—think they will?” she choked out.