Johnny Dice lay abed the following morning until half past seven o’clock, shamelessly reveling in his freedom from toil. At five Hobe and the others, Tony included, had trooped down to breakfast. Fifteen minutes later the Diamond-Bar boys had headed for the shipping pens to resume where they had left off the previous evening. Tony, helpless with nothing to do, waited with growing impatience for the appearance of the prodigal.

Specters of doubt, tantalizing ghosts of indecision troubled the sleeping Mr. Dice. His pugnacious face wore a frown. Every now and then his mouth would straighten and his jaw would shoot out to an alarming prominence. Maybe a dramatic gesture with his hand would follow. Johnny seemed continually to lose the decision in this silent fighting, for he would try it first on one side and then on the other.

Big Hobe had always found a bucketful of cold water a most excellent antidote for these symptoms; but Johnny was suffering from more than just too much sleep. He had closed his eyes convinced that he could put his hand on the guilty man. His deductions had been honest, sensible. Old man Kent was as guilty! Subconsciously, doubt had crept into his mind.

Jackson Kent had become such a meek, painfully righteous person these last few years that he seemed to lack the spinal stiffening a killer must possess. If he had been accused of taking nickels out of the collection box, one might have believed it of him; but murder? No! You’d have to have the reason for the crime, the whole, inside story of it before you could go out and expect men to believe you. Jackson Kent was a rich man, a figure of some importance in Shoshone County politics.

“Yes, we grant all that,” whispered perverse little fiends in Johnny’s ear, “but isn’t it men like Kent who, free from popular suspicion, commit crimes of this sort? Wasn’t his position in the county, his very respectability his best safeguard?”

Wild-eyed, Johnny sat up suddenly, his red head shaking doggedly. He looked about the room as if searching for the little devils that had romped through his sleep.

A grunt and an indulgent smile followed as he threw back the covers. “I’m sufferin’ from that psychic stuff,” he muttered. “Or is it food I need?”

His watch in his hands, he went to the door and called down to Vin: “Hey, Vin! Give me food or give me death! I’ll be there muy pronto, muchachito.”

Vinnie had a steaming breakfast on the table when Johnny entered the dining room. “By Chris’, Johnny, you sleep lak’ meel-li-on-aire. How you theenk I run theese bus’ness, breakfuss h’eight o’clock?”

“Aw, go on, you old dude!” Johnny laughed. “I’ll be borrowin’ money from you before I git through.”

It was only talk on Johnny’s part, but the Basque chose to take it seriously.

“That’s all right wit’ me, Johnny.” Vin shook his head solemnly. “I don’ refuse you, Johnny.”

“Oh, how sweet those words, ‘I will lend you,’” Johnny said airily. “But not yet you won’t, seÑor. Little Johnny has plenty dinero. Is the old man gone?”

“SÍ! Hobe and heem go half past five. Leetle while ago the old man come back alone an’ tak’ the train for Winnemucca.”

“Winnemucca?” Johnny Dice’s eyebrows lifted. Was Kent running away?

Hobe entered then to square the Diamond-Bar debt with the hotel. The barroom was deserted, and the foreman, peeking into the dining room, saw Johnny and Vin. He came in and settled himself in a chair opposite the former.

“Go and figure up yore bill, Vinnie,” he said to the Basque. When Vin had left, Hobe turned his inquisitive eyes to Johnny. “Last night was a terrible bust round here, wa’n’t it?”

“It’s all jake with me, Hobe. Don’t you fret.”

Ferris got up and walked back and forth a step or two, glum, his chin on his chest. “I reckon it ain’t all right with me, though. I ain’t exactly what you’d call a straw boss with this outfit—not after all these years. If it wa’n’t for the girl I’d ask for my time.”

Hobe propped back into his chair.

“Reckon I couldn’t face her, though. She knows he’s slippin’.”

Johnny’s knife and fork came down slowly, a peculiar dryness creeping into his throat as he thought of Molly Kent. He had forgotten her! Yet others, Hobe for instance, found time to think of her and consider her happiness.

And Johnny had been waiting only for Ferris to finish, to voice his suspicion of the old man.

The thought sent a shiver through him. Whatever old Kent had done, he was still Molly’s father. Johnny shook his head as he asked himself if he could send her daddy down to Carson to be hanged. He’d damn himself for a meddling fool before he’d be a party to that. Molly Kent meant too much to the old Diamond-Bar hands. No wonder Hobe thought of her. Hadn’t he taught her all the things a girl living on the range must know—riding, shooting, man-sense, and all the rest of it?

Why, hadn’t he—Johnny Dice—broken her first pony? Hadn’t he even tried to persuade Hobe into letting him show her how to ride that little coffee cooler? And there had been parties, too, at the big house; a girl’s pride in the day’s work well done; implicit faith in the Diamond-Bar’s ability to come through in a pinch.

Cold sweat stood on Johnny’s brow as he asked himself if he could fail a girl like her. His voice was husky as he spoke to Ferris.

“Where’s the old man?”

Hobe answered without looking up. “Gone to Winnemucca. Coming back to the ranch from there.”

Nothing more was said for a minute or two. Vin called to Hobe, then, and Ferris pushed back his chair.

“Might as well pay up and go back to the cars,” he said dolefully. “We’ll be through, come noon.”

Johnny got to his feet with the foreman.

“Listen, Hobe,” he said, “did I make a fool of myself last night, lightin’ into the old man thataway?”

Hobe rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “N-o-o-o,” he drawled. “One was bad as the other. He surprised me. He’d been havin’ such a good time with Doc all evenin’.”

“Huh? Doin’ what?”

Johnny’s face was white with an emotion that Ferris was at a loss to understand.

“Playin’ pinochle. I went outside to sit down after supper. The old man came out with me, and went across to Doc’s place. I sat out in front till the freight pulled up. Rain drove me in. Doc and him was still at it. I could see ’em through the window. I could tell he was winnin’.”

Johnny heaved a sigh of relief. That his solution of last night’s murder was knocked flat caused no rancor in his heart. Thank God, he had not given voice to his thoughts. Gallup would have laughed him out of town.

Ferris, far shrewder than he looked, had caught the signs of the anxiety which possessed Johnny. “Say, Johnny,” he inquired, “just what is it that y’u ain’t sayin’?”

Johnny winced at this directness, but he answered with a question seemingly irrelevant to it.

“Did you touch that dead man last night, Hobe?”

Ferris cocked his head. “Of course,” he said.

“Wasn’t the body warm?”

“Sure was. The man hadn’t been dead over thirty minutes.”

“That’s the way I figured it.”

If the man had been dead only half an hour and Hobe had been watching the old man during that very time, then to a certainty Jackson Kent had had no hand in the killing.

Still there was something unsaid between them. Ferris felt it. He put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder as they started for the door. Johnny stopped in his tracks. A flash of his eyes and the big man had his answer.

“Johnny!” he gasped. “No! My God, no! The old man didn’t do that!”

“Did I say so?” Johnny demanded vehemently.

“No. But y’u were thinkin’ it. Up in the room last night it was my idea, too. I wondered if y’d suspect him.”

Johnny could afford to be belligerent now.

“You bet I did. I suspect every man in this town until I prove to myself that he’s innocent. That it wasn’t him, is all right with me. I couldn’t have gone after Molly Kent’s dad. There ain’t no one else in this town with any strings on him as far as I’m concerned. I’ll git the man.”

Hobe knew this was not mere talk.

“What are y’u goin’ to do now?”

“Git busy! Like as not I’ll drift out to the ranch some time today and git my stuff. My address is where I hang my hat until I’ve put this puzzle together.”

Calling the waiting Tony, the two men went down the street.

“You forget anythin’ I said last night, Tony,” Johnny advised the Basque. “It’s out—complete. Git that!”

The direction in which they were going made Tony ask their destination.

“I’m goin’ to have a talk with Brackett. Let me do the palaverin’.”

The liveryman had not yet seen the corpse, so Johnny’s statement that the big stallion belonged to the dead man was a surprise to Brackett.

“Do you mind, Ed, if I have a look at the horse?” Johnny asked.

“No harm in that,” Brackett answered. “Nobody know his name, you say?”

“Total stranger, Ed. There might be some mark or somethin’ on his stuff.”

This brief minute of importance appealed to Ed, and the three men began searching for some mark of identification. The missing saddlebag escaped Brackett’s attention.

The search was a barren one, bed-roll, saddle and slicker being without any tell-tale mark. The stallion’s brand, a circle-dagger, had been over-burned years ago.

“Didn’t he have nothin’ up to the hotel with him?” Ed asked. “Man would have an extra shirt and socks.”

“Wasn’t a thing up there, Ed,” Johnny said truthfully. “Guess we can give up lookin’ here.”

When they had left the stable Johnny asked the Basque:

“Did you git what I found?”

“No. Me, I get not’ing.”

Johnny smiled.

“The silver buttons on the bridle,” he explained. “Both of them marked alike—C. T. I never heard of no brand like that. It’s his initials. That’s somethin’ else to keep under your hat. That’s a real clew.”

“How you know, pleece, those t’ing ees clew?”

“Know? You don’t have to know. A clew is just a clew. All we’ve got to do is to keep on gittin’ them. We’re goin’ to saddle up and fan it out to the ranch and git our stuff. I’m through lookin’ for evidence round here. If you saw that man on the North Fork three days ago, I just about know the way he took into town. He must have got on the North Fork from the west. If he did, he came through Winnemucca. Ain’t no other way he could have got out of the hills. I’m goin’ down to old Winnemuc and prospect around.”

“Cuidado!” Tony whispered. “Here comes Gallup.”

They were almost in front of Aaron’s house before they came abreast of him. The coroner’s eyes were snapping. Even his mustache seemed to stand at attention, bristling as it were with anger.

“Well, I suppose you little boys have been havin’ your fun this mornin’.” He snickered contemptuously. “You take a word of advice from me, Johnny Dice—a fool and his money soon depart!”

“Say, Aaron, that’s not bad. Not bad at all, but you paste this in your hat, and let it stick to your rickety old slats—I go, oh, yes, but only to return. In other words, I’ll be back! And somebody’s goin’ to burn the frijoles when I do.” Johnny’s voice became velvety as he added: “And there ain’t no one in this little old town makin’ me go, either, seÑor.”

“No?” Gallup inquired with sarcastic politeness. “Don’t you be too sure about that.”

Tony motioned to Johnny to come along, but the boy pushed him aside. “Suppose you enlighten me on that last remark,” he said to Gallup.

Aaron did not dodge the issue. “With pleasure! You git out of town by noon or there’ll be a warrant out for your arrest for disturbin’ the peace. You can’t make a fool out of me and git away with it.”

Tony’s jaw set at the word arrest. Johnny met the threat with a smile, but he did not take Gallup’s words as easily as he appeared to take them.

“You can’t shut me up any other way,” he explained for the coroner’s benefit, “so you’re goin’ to have Roddy throw me in jail, eh? You politicians certainly stick together, don’t you? I’d like to see that scarecrow sheriff go up against a real man.”

“If you flatter yourself that you’re one, you hang around.”

It was on Johnny’s tongue to make a fitting retort, to dare Gallup to bring up his reserves, but wisdom of a sort checked the hot words. He had set himself to do a certain thing. Shooting it out with Jasper Roddy would not accomplish it.

Tony’s eyes were smiling now—a smile as guileful as his race was old. That Basque smile under fire is one of the little ways by which the children of the far Pyrenees announce that they are not Mexican. That smile is something to consider if you are involved personally. Johnny caught it and understood.

Gallup was waiting for an answer. Johnny found one of little truth, but it caught old Aaron.

“Other business, my dear Mr. Gallup, forbids my doin’ battle with you and yours today. But some other day, dear sir!” Johnny’s tone was too extravagantly polite. “That little gun-play last evenin’ still absorbs my attention, Aaron. I could almost tell you who killed that man.”

The seriousness with which Johnny stated this fooled even Tony.

Gallup’s eyes wavered ever so little as Johnny stared into them. “Let’s hear his name,” Aaron demanded uneasily.

“You ask that—you of all men?” Johnny exclaimed, piling on the coals now that he had Aaron on edge.

“Why shouldn’t I ask?” the coroner almost roared. “Are you hintin’ at somethin’?”

Thus did Aaron deliver himself temporarily into Johnny’s hands.

“Why, ain’t you the party what proclaimed long and loud last night that that dead man killed hisself?”

Gallup swallowed hard.

“That’s all, huh?” he cried angrily. “Sounded to me like you was puttin’ me under suspicion.”

“Ain’t I?” demanded Johnny. “I aim to, if I haven’t. I suspect every man in this town today. And in your case, I couldn’t begin to tell you all that I suspect about you.”

“Mouth talk—sluff, that’s all anybody can git from you!” Gallup shook his fist in Johnny’s face. “When I talk, I say somethin’.”

“Yeh, your tongue’s all right, Aaron, but your brain is dead. You go down to Brackett’s place and find out a thing or two. That dead man’s horse and outfit is down there.”

Tony’s smile melted to one of almost positive enjoyment as he saw Gallup’s dismay. This bit of information thoroughly upset Aaron. Truly, this Dice person had put one over on him!

“You meddlin’ insect!” Gallup screeched as he stamped away. “You’ve got two hours to git out of town. You’ll find I know eighteen or twenty little ways to shut you up!”

Johnny sped him on his way with a laugh that curdled the old man’s soul.

At the corner, Johnny stopped to gaze at Aaron’s retreating figure, now a block away. Turning into the crossroad, they waited until Gallup entered Brackett’s barn.

“Come on, Tony,” Johnny urged. “I’ve got a strange desire to see the inside of Mr. Gallup’s house. You stay in front. I’m goin’ through the window. Move up and down. Whistle if he comes back.”

Johnny did not wait for the Basque to caution him. The window was open, and without any effort Johnny hoisted himself over the sill. Five minutes later he was back, and with Tony, started for the Palace.

Once in their room, Johnny pulled out the dead man’s gun. “We’re outside the law now, all right,” he muttered. “But we got the reason for goin’ to Winnemuc!”

“Those gun?”

“Sure, those gun,” Johnny laughed. “That’s a brand new firin’ pin in that pistol. I’m going to find out who put it there. They ain’t no gunsmith this side of Winnemucca. Roll your stuff and we’ll drift.”

Five minutes later they were ready.

“Mebbe you suppose Gallup fin’ those bridle buttons?” Tony asked as they started down the stairs.

“Not a chance, muchachito.” Johnny patted his pants pocket. “I don’t leave nothin’ behind.”