Idaho -- Fiction; Ranch life -- Fiction; Western stories
When the sheriff inspected the stable and its vicinity, looking for
clews, not a blanket was in sight, though a dozen eyes watched every
movement suspiciously. When at the inquest that afternoon, he laid upon
the table a battered old revolver of cheap workmanship and long past its
prime, and testified that he had found it ten feet from the stable-door,
in a due line southeast from the hay-corral, and that one shot had been
fired from it, there were Indians in plenty to glance furtively at the
weapon and give no sign.
The coroner showed the bullet which he had extracted from the body of
Saunders, and fitted it into the empty cartridge which had been under
the hammer in the revolver, and thereby proved to the satisfaction of
everyone that the gun was intimately connected with the death of the
man. So the jury arrived speedily, and without further fussing over
evidence, at the verdict of suicide.
Good Indian drew a long breath, put on his hat, and went over to tell
Miss Georgie. The Hart boys lingered for a few minutes at the store, and
then rode on to the ranch without him, and the Indians stole away over
the hill to their camp. The coroner and the sheriff accepted Pete's
invitation into the back part of the store, refreshed themselves after
the ordeal, and caught the next train for Shoshone. So closed the
incident of Saunders' passing, so far as the law was concerned.
“Well,” Miss Georgie summed up the situation, “Baumberger hasn't made
any sign of taking up the matter. I don't believe, now, that he will.
I wired the news to the papers in Shoshone, so he must know. I think
perhaps he's glad to get Saunders out of the way--for he certainly must
have known enough to put Baumberger behind the bars.
“But I don't see,” she said, in a puzzled way, “how that gun came onto
the scene. I looked all around the stable this morning, and I could
swear there wasn't any gun.”
“Well, he did pick it up--fortunately,” Good Indian returned grimly.
“I'm glad the thing was settled so easily.”
She looked up at him sharply for a moment, opened her lips to ask a
question, and then thought better of it.
“Oh, here's your handkerchief,” she said quietly, taking it from the
bottom of her wastebasket. “As you say, the thing is settled. I'm going
to turn you out now. The four-thirty-five is due pretty soon--and I have
oodles of work.”
He looked at her strangely, and went away, wondering why Miss Georgie
hated so to have him in the office lately.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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