A Time for Hanging by Bill Crider Page A

that had happened.   He could see the blood.   It was all over her.   He leaned a shoulder against the wall and heaved again, but nothing came up.
    Lizzie Randall.   Jesus, he was scared.
    He had to have a drink.   No, not a drink.   That wasn't what he needed right now.   What he needed was a bottle. A full bottle.
    Maybe two.

11.

    "She wasn't stabbed," Bigby had told Vincent when the sheriff had arrived at the doctor's office.   Just cut real bad, slashed, you might say.   That's why there was so much blood.   What killed her was the beatin'."   He wasn't smiling as much as he usually did.
    Vincent found it hard to believe that there was anyone in Dry Springs who could do a thing like that, and he said so to Bigby.
    "Anybody can do anything," Bigby said, shaking his head.   "You put them in the right place at the right time, they can do anything."
    "Where's the body now?"
    "I called Rankin.   He came and got it."
    Rankin was the undertaker.
    "Think he can do anything with her?" Vincent said.
    "You mean make her look better?   Maybe a little."   Bigby didn't sound as if he held out much hope.
    "The Randalls might be comin' by here.   You send 'em on to Rankin's," Vincent said.
    "They took it pretty hard, I guess."
    "They did," Vincent said.   "They surely did."   He was thinking about the Randalls as he left Bigby's office.
    He was in the grove now, looking for something, anything, that would help him figure our what happened.   For one thing, he wanted to find the knife, if it was still there, though he suspected the killer had taken it with him.
    He found the spot where the struggle had occurred.   There were some blood stains on the ground, a piece of Lizzie's dress, but that was all.   He took the piece of dress and put it in his pocket.
    He located the place where the horses had been tied last night and then walked along the trail looking for some sign of other horses.   If he found none, he would look in the trees.
    He found soon found some droppings beside the trail.   He broke them open.   They were fresh, but the ground was too hard to offer any tracks, and though he looked for quite a while he found nothing that was any help to him.   The droppings proved that someone else had been along the trail, maybe around the time of the murder, but that was all.   They didn't have to come from the killer's horse.   Lots of people used that trail.
    If Paco was telling the truth, of course, there had to have been someone else in the grove last night.   It looked as if there had been, but that wasn't necessarily going to help Paco, who hadn't seen anyone except the men who had beaten him.
    He continued to look around, moving back into the trees to the place where Paco had been lying.   Not too far away, Vincent found the twisted sacks of salt and sugar.
    He put them in his pocket with the piece of Lizzie's dress.
    They didn't prove anything either, except that Paco had been telling the truth when he said that he had been to the store.   He could still have killed the girl.
    Vincent was liking the whole thing less and less.   There was going to be trouble over this, he could tell it, the kind of trouble he had spent years trying to avoid.  
    His stomach lurched.   He told himself it was just that he hadn't eaten breakfast, but he knew better.   He was afraid of what might happen.
    The men who had found the body were convinced Paco was guilty.   They were going to start talking around town, and things could turn ugly fast.
    The sun was getting higher in the sky.   It was going to be another hot day.   Vincent found himself wishing for rain, thinking that heavy clouds and pouring water might calm things down or at least postpone any violence that might be coming.   But there was no hope of rain.
    He walked wearily back to his horse.   Maybe he would have been more optomistic if he had been able to sleep the night before, but it was too late to worry about that.   He swung himself into the