That star rodeo performer, but as bad an egg as ever moonlit a bronc, the “Oklahoma Kid,” wrestled his steer to a quick fall, and the voice of “Foghorn” McNamara, holding his horse quiet to face the crowded grand stand at Speedway Park, came booming across the field to where Millie Wayne, in her cowgirl clothes, stood waiting to participate in the next event on the program.
“That bulldogger was Jack Marling, the Oklahoma Kid. Time, seventeen seconds flat. Next and last contestant in today’s bulldogging is ‘Curly’ Bratton.”
Preston Campbell, the rodeo judge, gray-mustached Texan of the old school, raised a hand toward the chute where the next steer waited, and the red beast plunged wildly across the arena, desperate to leave behind him the lithe youngster with the blazing neckerchief who galloped on his flank.
Opposite the middle of the grand stand the horse overtook the steer, swerved in, and Curly leaped and got the horns with not one lost motion. Feet braced, he slid backward for two seconds, then man and steer came to a struggling stop. For one more second they might have been a statue.
The animal’s head, then, twisted slowly, grotesquely, as though it cocked its startled eyes to squint sidewise at the sky. Its feet went out from under it. Down together to the ground crashed bulldogger and bulldogged, and the youth’s right hand shot upward in signal to the judge.
The Oklahoma Kid, who meantime had been returning across the field, out of the public picture, stopped beside Millie Wayne.
“Can you beat it?” he demanded. “Drop that hombre into a dipping vat and he’d come up with a pocket full of oil wells! If I could ever get luck to break for me that-a-way——”
Millie was not listening. A bit breathlessly she was looking toward where Curly and the steer were rising out of the dust. It had been a wonderful throw. After exhibitions like that it had been Curly’s habit to wave his hand at her—until the previous day.
A messenger, cantering over from where old Pres Campbell sat on his horse in the center of the field, handed a slip of paper to Foghorn McNamara, who glanced at it and made due announcement:
“That bulldogger was Curly Bratton. Time, eleven and two fifths seconds. The world’s record is seven and two fifths seconds. Curly Bratton wins today’s bulldogging. Jack Marling, second. Billy Toms, third. The next event is the cowgirls’ trick-riding contest. The ladies taking part——”
Millie’s teeth shut tightly over her lower lip. Curly had not looked at her at all. He had waved his hand toward the stand—toward one spot in the stand, the same spot he had waved to yesterday afternoon, the spot where a brilliant toque hat made a splash of violent red. And under the crimson splash a feminine hand waved back.
It was a soft, pinkly manicured hand, quite different from Millie’s not unbeautiful but hard, competent ones. Millie had not failed to note the contrast when its owner—her name was Florrine—had been introduced to a lot of the performers by one of the resident managers of the show after the first afternoon’s contests. Millie had closely observed the face, too; an oval, olive face, artistically tinted, with languishing dark eyes. And the clothes.
Miss Florrine wore modish clothes; Millie, even at the moment when Curly, shaking hands with the city girl, had awkwardly murmured his delight at meeting her, had realized how they looked in comparison with her own picturesque but simple working garb. At the same moment she had sensed that the girl was attracted by Curly—as who wouldn’t be?—and that Curly was tremendously flattered and impressed.
Then, not much later, Curly and Miss Florrine had spoken together at the edge of the group, and Curly, that evening, carefully attired in his most striking raiment, had left the hotel immediately after dinner and was still absent when Millie went to bed. The previous day he had waved toward the red hat instead of at Millie. And now again on this day.
Millie would be the second on the cowgirl program, and the first contestant rode out to do her stuff. Millie cinched her horse, which did not need it, and only half heard the Oklahoma Kid as he came closer, having observed Curly’s gesture toward the stand as well as she, and suggested:
“Let’s you and me do a show or something in town tonight. Huh? Whatya say, Miss Wayne? Let’s.”
Nothing in the world was farther from Millie’s mind than going to a show or anywhere else with Jack Marling, but she was angry and her pride was hurt. She and Curly Bratton were not engaged, but everybody expected them to be. His attention had been solely for her in half a dozen Western rodeos and chance had again brought them together at this, one of the first real rodeos, and not a wild-West show, ever given on the Atlantic seaboard outside New York.
For the first day, Curly had been as attentive to her as ever—and then he had met that handsome, sophisticated girl of the red hat.
“Huh?” urged the Oklahoma Kid.
“Whatya say, Miss Wayne? A show and some good eats, somewheres.”
That was precisely what she had promised to do, that night, with Curly. Promised it on the opening day of the show, before he had seen the Florrine girl. Millie was conscious, as she straightened, that Curly was approaching now, on his way to the dressing tents. Just as he arrived within hearing, “Red” Peeks, the clown, came riding on his donkey and stopped to pass Curly a .45 caliber pistol.
“Thanky kindly,” the clown said. “No more shootin’ for today and I won’t need it tomorrow. My own’ll be fixed.”
Dressed for bulldogging and hence with no holster, Curly held the weapon in his hand as he stopped beside Millie and the Oklahoma Kid. Curly did not like the Kid, but, more, he did not like to see him talking to Millie. That he himself was thinking less of her, these days, than of the girl whose bright headdress set off her olive skin, did not alter this feeling; man in such matters is not consistent.
He hesitated a second, looked from one to the other and said:
“We got a date tonight, Millie. Will you be ready ’bout seven?”
This casual taking it for granted that he could do what he had done and not suffer her resentment stirred Millie into cold anger, but she came of a stock trained not to exhibit emotion and merely smiled as she replied:
“You must have got your nights mixed, Curly. Because tonight I’ve got an engagement with Mr. Marling.”
Curly’s face fell almost comically. He stared from her to the grinning Oklahoma Kid and opened his mouth as though to protest. Then he swallowed, turned away and walked toward the chutes.
“What time tonight, little one?” Marling asked.
He was staggered by her answer and the flash of her eyes that accompanied it.
“Not any time,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“Next contestant,” bellowed Foghorn McNamara, “is Miss Millie Wayne!”
She sprang into her saddle and was off toward the stand, while Marling, who understood some kinds of women very well but her kind not at all, gazed open-mouthed after her. Turning, he also tramped toward the chutes and found Curly Bratton, his face harshly set, standing a little apart from the other cowboys, waiting.
Curly’s voice was very low and his normal drawl was exaggerated.
“If you’ll excuse me, suh,” he said to Marling, “I’d admire to have you not meddle wi’ that lady.”
“Well, what the——”
“I don’t want to have no quarrel with you, suh, but there ain’t no reason why we shouldn’t understand each other. She don’t happen to know you very well, I reckon, and of course I ain’t the one to tell her—and I don’t go round shootin’ off any backcapping talk to ladies or any one else—but she ain’t the kind——”
The Oklahoma Kid recovered from his astonishment.
“You got some nerve, telling me who’ll I’ll take out and who I won’t take out. If it wasn’t for the rules o’——”
“Sh-h-h, if you please, suh. There ain’t no reason for anybody else to know——”
Marling raised his voice even louder.
“Anybody in the wide world can know as far as I’m concerned, hombre! I pick my own girls and my own girls pick me, Millie Wayne or anybody else.”
The group at the chutes had fallen silent, ears pricked.
Bratton spoke through his teeth, hardly more than a whisper.
“I’d rather you didn’t mention no ladies’ names.”
“Who the blazes are you, to be telling me——”
A shadow fell upon them and Pres Campbell, ex-Texas Ranger, quietly wheeled his horse. His voice was level but authoritative.
“If you boys got any quarreling to do, wait till after the show. You know the rule about rowdyism. Well, I’ll enforce it against both of you if I have to. What’s it all about? If you’re kicking about your bulldogging time, Marling, you’re plumb wrong. I fined you five seconds because there wa’n’t no daylight showing between you and the steer at the dead line, but that didn’t change the result; even if you hadn’t lost that five seconds Bratton still beat you.”
“Aw, that’s all right, judge,” Marling said.
“And you, Bratton, what you got that gun in your hand for? You know there’s a rule against carrying a gun except where they’re called for in the show.”
“I lent it to Red Peeks. His was busted. He just give it back to me.”
“All right. Go put it up. And don’t let me hear any more ruckuses startin’ on this field.”
Fully master of the rodeo and its contestants, old Pres turned and cantered back to the center of the field. The Oklahoma Kid had disappeared into a tent and Curly, with not much time before the calf-roping event, hastened to his own.
Millie Wayne, unable to sleep, although the cowgirl in bed with her was piling up strength for the morrow like a child, heard the knock, not far from midnight, on the door on the next room, heard Pres Campbell’s quick call of “Who is it?” and the voice of one of the local rodeo committeemen in the hotel corridor, saying:
“Sorry to wake you up, Mr. Campbell, but one of your men’s been killed, downtown, and the police have just come and got another one for doing it.”
“What’s that?” Millie heard Campbell’s feet hit the floor, his room door open. “Who’s killed? How?”
“Marling. Curly Bratton did it, it seems. Shot him. The cops came out and found the pistol in his room. Recently fired. They had a quarrel this afternoon.”
“Come in while I get dressed. I know about that quarrel—it was over the bulldogging win. At least I thought it was; come to think of it, I didn’t hear a word of it. Where did they get to fighting? Which one went after his gun first?”
“It don’t seem to have been a fight,” the local man said. “Marling was shot in the back of the head.”
Wide-eyed, Millie swung around to sit on the edge of her bed. She heard Pres Campbell exclaim:
“The thunder he was! I’d ’a’ swore Bratton wa’n’t that kind of a boy. Does he admit it?”
“No. He says he hasn’t seen Marling since this afternoon’s show. But he can’t prove where he was this evening. Says he was downtown till ten o’clock and didn’t see anybody he knew that can alibi him.”
“Come in,” Pres invited, and she heard the door close.
A murmur of indistinguishable words followed while the Texan dressed. His close to sixty years had not lost him his habit of taking command of a situation or his ability to get into his clothes quickly, and barely five minutes had elapsed before Millie heard his decisive:
“All right, Mr. Taylor. Let’s go!”
She had thrown on a kimono and stood in her doorway as committeeman and one-time ranger came out.
“Uncle Pres!” she cried. “I couldn’t help hearing. He didn’t do it.”
“How do you know?” the local man demanded, before Campbell could speak.
“I know him. He’d never shoot anybody from behind.”
“Just what I said,” agreed the ex-ranger. “But what he seems to need is an alibi. Maybe, if you and he were together any——”
“I haven’t seen him since he went out right after supper, and then I don’t think he saw me; I just noticed him going through the lobby,” the girl said. “But it’s nonsense to charge him——”
“He and Marling quarreled this afternoon,” put in Taylor. “Over one of Mr. Campbell’s decisions.”
Millie knew nothing of the quarrel, of course. She could only say again, stubbornly:
“But he didn’t do it. You’re going to try to get him out, aren’t you, Uncle Pres?”
“Going to do everything I can,” the old man replied. “I don’t guess we’ll be able to get him turned loose tonight, but first thing in the mawnin’, if we have luck—— You go back to bed, Millie, and get your sleep. I’ll let you know how things stand first thing in the mawnin’.”
He and Taylor passed down the corridor and were standing at the elevator when Millie called him back and spoke too low for the local man to hear.
“Curly never would bring any lady’s name into a thing where it might get into the newspapers unless he was sure it wouldn’t hurt her,” she said. “He went—— I don’t know it, but there’s a girl——”
“I’ve sort of suspected there might be, noticing you two the last day or so,” Campbell remarked dryly. “Wa’n’t none of my business, of course, but I couldn’t help noticin’. Some city lady, is it?”
“She’s sat in the same place in the grand stand every day, wearing a red hat——”
“Me, I don’t notice ladies’ hats much,” Pres said. “Maybe, if you could give me a better description——”
“I was introduced to her, at the same time Curly was. Miss Florrine, her name is. She’s—she’s very pretty and well-dressed and city-acting.”
“H’mph!” grunted the ex-ranger. “And boys don’t have sense enough to know when they’re well off. Any more,” he conceded, “then they did when I was one. Who is she?”
“I don’t know. Nothing except her name. But if his alibi had to include her, and for any reason he thought she ought to be protected, he’d never tell.”
“Florrine,” said Pres. “That isn’t a common name, or hard to remember. When I get to see him, I’ll know what to ask about.”
In the detective room at police headquarters, while Taylor remained discreetly silent, Pres Campbell met a character new in his experience—the plain-clothes man promoted from pounding a beat, who had never been outside a big city, never wanted to be, and oozed contempt for every one and everything that was not metropolitan.
“You bozos with big hats,” he remarked heavily, “think you can get away with murder. Nothing to it, mister; nothing to it. This Bratton guy did it and we’ve got him. You and your gang of cowboys can’t come into this town and pull your rough stuff.”
Campbell, whose competency in crime detection could be attested by thousands of Texans, was here unfamiliar with the laws, unacquainted with police procedure and at sea as to his rights. One more familiar with Southwestern characteristics than was Detective Moore would have noted a glint in his eye and set of his jaw at the sneer. After the slightest hesitation, to be certain that he had his temper quite under command, the ex-ranger said:
“If you would be willing to tell me a little, perhaps, about how you know Bratton done it—that is, if it ain’t defeatin’ the ends of justice any way to tell—— You see, suh, I’m in a sort of way the head of this outfit of ours, being the contest judge and so forth. If there isn’t any reason why you should be afraid to tell me——”
“Say, what would make you think I might be afraid of anybody in your gang?” the detective demanded truculently. “Not any, cowboy, not any! I don’t know how your constables out West go clean up a murder, but me—first thing when a guy gets bumped off like this man of yours, I look for the frail.”
“Frail?” queried Pres.
“The skirt; the jane; the woman. And this time it was easy. This Bratton quarrels with Marling only this afternoon over her—and you know that cussed well, because you stopped ’em.”
“Me? I thought they were having words over one of my decisions.”
“Yes, you did!” scoffed the detective. “Well, they wasn’t. Half a dozen men heard the girl’s name when Marling spoke it.”
“I didn’t. What was the name?”
“Say, are you trying to kid me? You know blame well it was Wayne—Millie Wayne. One of them roughneck women with your show.”
“Mr. Moore,” said Pres, very mildly, “Miss Wayne’s a right nice young lady, suh. I’d admire not to have you speak like that about her.”
“You’d ‘admire’ for me not to speak like that about a ‘right nice’ young lady,” mimicked Moore. “Listen, fella! You ain’t out in the brush now. You’re in a town with bright lights in it. And I talk about women that get mixed up in murders like they’re supposed to be talked about. Get me?”
The briefest second Pres Campbell fought for self-control and achieved it.
“Yes, suh,” he said. “Well, if there ain’t anythin’ I can do to help——”
“When we need any help from yap deputy sheriffs, we’ll broadcast for it,” Moore answered.
“Yes, suh,” said Pres, and turned toward the door, observing that of the three or four other detectives in the room, at least two were grinning broadly. “I’ll bid you good night, suh.”
Out on the street, the local committeeman said: “Well, that’s that. I told you my being with you would probably do you more harm than good, my not being tied up with this city administration—but I don’t know as you’d have done any better if you’d gone alone. It’s never a bad idea to have a witness along when you’re talking to a man like that Moore.”
“I wanted to see Curly and I’d have liked to see Marling’s body, too,” the ex-ranger replied, “but there wa’n’t any use asking after he got so plumb insulting.”
They were walking slowly and now became conscious that footsteps behind them were quickening. As they turned a corner and passed out of sight of the police headquarters entrance, a husky voice called cautiously:
“Go on past that street light and stop.”
Campbell, over his shoulder, recognized a thickset, elderly man as having been one of the audience during his interview with Detective Moore.
Taylor whispered: “Detective Graney. One of the old-timers on the force.”
They stopped in the shadow halfway down the block and Graney came ponderously heavy-footed to stand beside them.
“Kind of a raw deal Moore give you, back there,” he remarked. “He don’t know nothing about folks from Texas, Moore don’t.”
“Do you, suh?” Campbell asked courteously.
“Well, a little,” replied the detective. “And here all I pounded after you guys for was because I got kinda used to Texas fellas in the Spanish War, and most of ’em that I run into was good sports.” He added, ingeniously: “And because this Moore—you don’t need to go repeating it, either of you, though it ain’t any secret to him I think so—is a bonehead, right.”
“He didn’t seem to consult the rest of you much,” Pres remarked tactfully.
“He never does; he knows it all himself,” said Graney. “It ain’t like he was the chief, you know. It just happens, the chief being out of town and the cap’n off duty tonight, that he’s sitting in at the top.”
Graney concluded bitterly:
“He’s a wise guy—I don’t think.”
The ex-ranger wasted no time seeking to learn what ancient departmental feud between Graney and Moore might be at the bottom of this bitterness, but asked practically:
“What can we do, friend?”
“What,” inquired the detective, “do you want to do—short of getting your man out?”
“I want to talk with him—and I want to see the man that was killed.”
“Fair enough,” Graney commented. “We’ll do the second thing first—over at the morgue. After that we’ll come back and you can see Bratton in his cell.” He explained this order of procedure by saying: “Moore goes off duty at two o’clock. The fella that takes charge then don’t like him much more’n I do.”
Taylor at this point intimated that morgues had never entered into his life and he hoped they never would. Campbell was entirely willing to excuse him from further participation in the night’s wanderings. The ex-ranger and Detective Graney, presently, were viewing the body of the reckless and once handsome Oklahoma Kid, awaiting the official autopsy that would take place in the morning.
At his first glance, the Texan spoke with relief.
“Yes,” he said. “There ain’t any doubt about his being shot from behind. I was afraid some mistake had been made about that and if it had been done from in front, it might ’a’ been a fight. Where’s the bullet?”
“We never found it,” Graney said. “The killing, you see, was out of doors. In that alley that leads up to the side door of the Monaco Cabaret.”
“I hope it gets found. Because I’m sure Curly Bratton ha’n’t got any gun except a .45. All the pistols in our outfit are that caliber. And there ain’t any way of proving it without that piece of lead, because bullets don’t always act just the same in all cases—but I’d gamble the best hawse I’ve got that this hole wasn’t made by any Colt. Looks to me as if it was too small going in and too big coming out. When you find that bullet, if it isn’t busted so its weight don’t prove anything, I’m sayin’ it’ll be a .38 at the biggest, and perhaps a .32.”
His eyes fell upon the pile of clothing that had been stripped from the body.
“Say, Mr. Graney!” he demanded. “Are you sure all these clothes were Marling’s?”
“Bound to be,” the detective said. “The system they’ve got here, there’s no chance of a mix-up.”
“I took ’em off him myself,” put in the morgue attendant who accompanied them. “Don’t touch ’em. The coroner ain’t looked ’em over yet.”
“I wasn’t aiming to,” Pres assured him. “I’ve been a peace officer myself.”
“What’s the matter with ’em?” Graney asked.
“Nothing. Only he didn’t usually wear a red handkerchief around his neck. Let’s go!”
Through steel bars, Pres talked with Curly Bratton. Detective Graney was kind enough to stand back out of earshot.
“Right off, firsthand,” Campbell said, “I’ll tell you, son, I don’t believe you did it. And Millie, she was right positive. Wouldn’t make any difference how much evidence these police thought they had, she’d know better.”
“They haven’t told me all the details of what they think,” Curly remarked, “but they’ve got hold of that quarrel the Kid and me had this afternoon. I don’t know how much the boys heard—I don’t think they heard anything I said—but I was declaring myself to him after I found out him and her were going out to supper together.”
“They were?” exclaimed Pres. “They didn’t.”
It was Curly’s turn to exhibit astonishment.
“She told me they were going to,” he said. “If she hadn’t—— Tell you the truth, judge, she and me had a date for supper tonight and when you come up on the Kid and me, that-a-way, she had just a few minutes before turned me down and said she was going with him—told me with him present. And while I didn’t so much care right at that minute about her going with me, thinking of her going out with him got me mad.”
“Why didn’t you want her to go with you? If she didn’t, were you going to meet the Florrine lady?”
“Oh, judge! Her name isn’t going to get into it, too, is it?”
“How are you going to stop these police digging up all sorts of things?” Pres countered. “And if Miss Florrine can alibi you——”
“But she can’t,” Curly protested. “I haven’t seen her since this afternoon at the rodeo and then I didn’t see her to speak to.” He hesitated a second, then said: “We don’t want to drag any nice lady’s name into this, judge, but between you and me I was looking for her, Millie having turned me down and all that. But she wasn’t where she and I met last night. So I looked round a while and then went home and went to bed.”
He explained further. “Being kind of upset, one way and another, I forgot to clean my pistol like I’d intended to. Red Peeks had used it for the show, you know. And the police, finding it had been fired—telling ’em about Peek’s firing it made no difference, because it wouldn’t be no dirtier if I had fired it afterward——”
“I know,” interrupted Campbell. “You didn’t call on Miss Florrine at her home, I take it.”
“She thought her folks might object, me being a cowboy and all,” Curly confided. “So we met at one of these cabaret dance places—the Monaco is the name of it.”
“The Monaco, eh? Who did you see there you knew—not last night when you were with Miss Florrine, but tonight, when you couldn’t find her?”
“Nobody,” declared Curly with obvious sincerity. “Not a soul. I went in and looked around and she wasn’t there, so I bought me a drink for manners, and pretty soon I went out and looked in a couple other places and then I beat it home to the hotel.”
“Was there anybody in the alley when you came out of the Monaco?”
“Alley?” Curly queried. “What alley?”
“Where the side door is.”
“I never noticed any side door on any alley. Me, I went in at the front—tonight and the other two times I’ve been there. I went there the first time with Pearl—I mean Miss Florrine——”
“Got real well acquainted for three days, didn’t you, son? Quite a few folks must have noticed it, one place and another. And it never occurred to you, I s’pose, that when Millie said she wa’n’t going to supper with you, it might be because she thought prob’ly you’d rather be out again with the new girl. I don’t know that, but I don’t guess it’s a bad shot in the dark.
“Girls are fussy that a way about dividing their time with new ladies,” he went on. “Millie didn’t tell me either that or anything else about it all, but I gathered from something she said that you had trompled on her feelings. That didn’t stop her saying she knew you didn’t kill him, though.”
“Who do you suppose did, judge?”
“No more idea’n the man in the moon,” Pres had to admit. “But we aim to do some investigatin’ between now and sunup, me and this friend of mine that’s a detective. I see you’re wearing the usual red handkerchief.”
Curly’s fingers went to it.
“What’s that got to do with things?”
“I dunno,” the ex-ranger replied. “I dunno as it’s got anything to do with ’em a-tall. I only happened to notice it. Have you happened, escortin’ her round to one place and another, to meet any of Miss Florrine’s friends?”
“I don’t remember any names. Just folks we met there in the Monaco and another dance place we went into.”
“All seem to be well-dressed, up-to-date folks?”
“Yes. Look here, judge, there ain’t no reason to go ringing her or her friends in on a mess of trouble like this. Her folks are kinda old-fashioned and don’t like her to go round to dance halls where it’s lively——”
“Lots of old folks are that a way. Did you say they were father and mother both?”
“I didn’t say. I don’t know as I ever heard her mention. What difference does it make? I didn’t find her tonight.”
“That’s so; so you didn’t. Well, I’m sorry to leave you here, son, but I’ve got to. We’ll be doing all we can.”
“A habeas corpus and reasonable bail and——” Curly began, but Campbell shook his head.
“This ain’t Texas. Up in this country they don’t fix reasonable bail for homicide. But keep smilin’. Your friends are all on the job—especially Millie.”
“Say, judge,” said the cowboy with some embarrassment. “I been kinda foolish, maybe. These new folks I met are right nice folks, but I didn’t really—— I don’t s’pose anything can be done to square it, but sitting here I’ve been thinking that our own kind o’ folks is our own kind o’ folks. If Millie could sort o’ forgive——”
“Curly,” said the older man, “Millie’s daddy and me were friends as long as he lived—such good friends that she’s been callin’ me ‘uncle’ ever since she was old enough to talk. I aim, when she gets married, to do anythin’ an old-timer like me can do to see she gets a fairish sort of husband.
“Personally,” he continued, “I’d rather she took a kid that had made a few kinds of fool of himself and got over it than one that city glitter was going to get some time after he married, maybe. Millie’s got a heap o’ sense. She might see it the same way—and then, again, she mightn’t, dependin’ upon whether the fool kid acted like he’d got over it or not.”
“Listen, judge,” said Curly. “From the minute she ’lowed she was going to eat with Jack Marling, I’ve been looking at things different. I don’t s’pose she could understand that starting right out to try to find another lady was a sort of—a sort of getting square, as you might say.”
“I don’t suppose she could—not right away,” Pres replied. “But time and good fruits of repentance has given her confidence in many a hawse that was a right bad bronc when she first forked him. So long, son! Don’t go to frettin’ too much—about anything.”
Out on the street again, Campbell said to Graney:
“What sort of place is that Monaco Cabaret?”
“Bum!” the detective answered. “But prosperous. The gang that hangs out there has plenty money, these days.”
“Bootleggers among ’em, maybe?”
“And hijackers and a few other things. And sports that like to travel with ’em.”
“Just between ourselves, did you ever hear of a young lady named Pearl Florrine?”
“‘The Red Pearl?’” Graney replied promptly. “Some stepper!”
“Red?”
“Fits her two or three ways. For one thing, she always wears it. Another, she trains with Reds, anarchists, or communists or sump’n—I don’t pretend to know just which kind they belong to. Her regular married name is Ricotti, although Angelo don’t go by it.”
“Angelo?”
“Her husband. He calls his last name ‘Rich.’ ‘Quick’ Rich is how the gang knows him. Got it—though we’ve never been able to convict him—by his speed in pulling a gat.”
“A gunman?”
“Sure. What’s all this got——”
“Where is he?”
“He’s been out o’ town the last week or so, but I seen a report from one of our railroad station men that he got back, unexpected, about six o’clock tonight—last night, I mean; it’s morning now.”
“Mr. Graney,” promised Campbell with confidence, “you take me to Angelo Ricotti, and think up a good way to get him mad and talkative, and I’ll give you a laugh on Mr. Detective Moore that he won’t get over till Texas is annexed back to Mexico.”
Briefly, he went into details. Unhesitatingly, enthusiastically, Detective Graney agreed with him.
It was a little past three o’clock when they found Quick Rich in the back room of a hang-out whose sentry they and the policeman on the beat had succeeded in suppressing without any alarm being given. One other man was present and Campbell seized and disarmed him while Graney jammed a pistol into Rich’s midriff and took from his coat a .38 automatic with its barrel powder stained.
“It’s no good, Quick,” the detective said, when the handcuffs were on. “We know all about the killing. The Pearl turned you in.”
“So she was there, was she?” raved Angelo. “If I’d seen her, I’d ’a’ made a double job of it. Well, I got him anyway, the whelp! Waving his hand at her every day in the grand stand in front of five thousand people—and her waving back! And the nerve to take her out and make a fool of me to the whole gang! And Pearl—just because we had some words—kidding him along, with his big hat and cowboy clothes and red handkerchief!”
“You identified him by his red handkerchief, of course, just as he was heading into the side door of The Monaco,” Pres suggested mildly.
“Sure I did! They told me he was the only one of that wild-West crowd that ever wore one. Who are you?”
“Mr. Campbell,” said Detective Graney unctuously, “is a guy from Texas that used to be a Roughrider. And him and me is going to do some more roughridin’—with a certain know-it-all gent to be rode—along about court time in the mornin’.”
“Moore was right at that, in a way,” murmured the ex-ranger as the patrolman left to ring for the patrol. “‘Look for the woman;’ that’s as good a rule in some killin’s in Texas as it is here in the East. And I followed his hunch and did the same thing. But down in my part of the country we use words some different. When we say women, we usually don’t mean ladies.”