William W. Johnstone by Massacre Mountain Page B

Harrison?”
    “Maybe we won’t need him,” I said, eyeing that nasty bloodstain spreading over the back of the man’s shirt. I tried to find a pulse and couldn’t. I noted that the man’s flesh was plenty cool. I laid my ear on his chest, and heard nothing.
    “He’s gone, Cotton,” Sammy said.
    I turned him slowly over to look at that wound in his back. The blood was caked around a wound below the ribs. I pulled the shirt up and exposed the injury, which appeared to be a stab wound.
    “Knifed him,” Upward said.
    I agreed. Someone had killed this party with a large knife, judging from the size of that cut, near here or even out in front of here. He was no one I’d seen in Doubtful before. I wondered whether he was connected to the Gildersleeve Variety Company. So, there was no more peace in Doubtful. I sure hated that. I’d kept the lid on for a long while, and now there was trouble, seemed like everywhere.
    I pulled his pockets out, looking for a purse or something that would put a name to him. Except for a couple of two-bit pieces in his trousers, he had nothing in his pockets. No purse or billfold. Likely his purse got took by whoever stabbed him in the back.
    “You think maybe he was with the show?” Sammy asked.
    “I’m going to have to ask. That Mrs. Gildersleeve is over to the hotel, and she’s the one to tell me. I’m going to wake her up.”
    “He don’t look like one of that traveling company,” Upward said. “They’re rough. The men got skin like leather, and the women more so. The roustabouts look like they came out of some mean place, like St. Louis or Memphis. All that company got flesh so hard you could turn it into alligator boots.”
    “Mrs. Gildersleeve was traveling with a gent,” I said. “I hardly got a look at him, but this one fits the bill.”
    I watched that cowboy clamber up on his barstool. The other one stared, his head in his hands, his elbows propping him up.
    “You a couple of cowboys?” I asked.
    “Cowboys? Cowboys? Scum of the earth, if you ask me,” said the wizened older one.
    “Cooks, sir. Cooks, and don’t you forget it. I cook for the Admiral Ranch, and him, there, cooks for the Baker Ranch. And if you call me a cowboy again, I’ll skin you with a paring knife.”
    “You cook a good meal, do you?”
    “Absolutely not, Sheriff. It would offend the universe to treat cowboys to a good feed. The idea, Sheriff, is to produce hog slop for them rannies, and let them suffer.”
    “Was this here body we took from under your horses there when you got here?”
    “I never examine the manure, Sheriff.”
    “Naw, he got there when we was drinkin’ in here,” said the other.
    “That’s right,” Sammy said. “I’d have heard about it.”
    “You know this dead man?”
    “I wouldn’t want to know him. I refuse to know him. If I knew him I’d have to quit my job and go to Colorado.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Because he’s dead drunk.”
    I wasn’t getting anywhere with that pair, and they were too far gone to help. I thought of locking them up and questioning them when they had a morning headache, but thought better of it.
    “All right, go on. If I need you I know where to get you,” I said.
    They didn’t move. One was asleep, the other one nearly so.
    “I gotta get Maxwell,” I said.
    Upward shrugged. He woke his two customers and managed to steer them to the billiard table. I ducked out, headed across town, rang Maxwell’s gong, and he showed up at the door with a bull’s-eye lantern.
    “Got an unidentified body at the Last Chance.”
    Maxwell yawned. “You would, wouldn’t you?” he asked.
    “I’ll be sending people over in the morning to get the story on him.”
    “Who’s going to pay me?”
    “You take your chances, Maxwell.”
    The door slammed in my face. He would arrive with a handcart at the saloon in twenty minutes.
    I was tired. I’d been held up, my horse stole, my room burglarized, and now I had a murder, all in two or three