He glanced at Kent, but the old man was staring at the body. “You oblige me, Jackson?” Gallup asked. “No,” he muttered; “let Doc do it. I don’t fancy counting a dead man’s money.” Old Aaron smiled. “All right,” he drawled patiently. “Guess Doc ain’t so finicky. He knows that dead men don’t hurt no one.” CHAPTER IV FOOT-LOOSE The crowd began trooping downstairs as Doc put the body back on the bed and covered it. Johnny Dice shook his head as he turned to follow his friends. There was something wrong about this affair. He felt it long before he was able to put his fingers on anything definitely suspicious. His tilt with Gallup was of no consequence. The old man disliked him because he refused to take the coroner seriously. And then, too, Johnny and Tony had been stringing along for some years. Aaron had foreclosed a small mortgage on one of Tony’s relatives. That made bad blood between them. Johnny’s suspicions crystallized as Doc lifted the body. He saw a bit of evidence that no man on earth could contradict. His nerves began to tingle. This man had not killed himself! Gallup caught the grim smile on Johnny’s face. “What you waitin’ for?” he asked. Johnny continued to smile provokingly. “Ain’t no one sittin’ up for you at home, is there, Aaron?” The old man’s face went scarlet at this continued heckling. “By God,” he cried, “I wisht I was twenty years younger! You’d stop your insolence.” “That’s so, Aaron. I forgot that. I’m sorry.” Johnny meant it, too. The old man was an almost helpless target. Johnny stooped to hide his chagrin and picked a little curl of wool from the floor. The action had been unpremeditated, but as his fingers closed upon the tuft of wool it became charged with importance. Too late. Johnny tried to palm it. Aaron saw him. “What’s that you’re pickin’ up?” he demanded. “A piece of the golden fleece—I mean the creosoted fleece,” Johnny said with a laugh. “Want it?” “’Course not, you idiot.” “You’d better go downstairs, Johnny,” Kent advised. “You and Gallup remind me of a pair of clawin’ cats. If you ain’t got no respect for old age, you ought to have for the law, and them that represents it.” Something in Kent’s tone made Johnny resent this advice. “Respect for the law?” he asked. “I’m plumb hostile to law when it gits as stupid as this. I pick up that bit of wool, and what does it mean to him? Nothin’! Well, it ought to.” “How so?” Gallup snapped. “There ain’t been no sheepman in here tonight. It’s wet outside. The wind ain’t blowin’ wet wool into this room. How’d that piece of fleece git here? And while I’m about it, no one has proved to me that this gent killed hisself. I could have slipped up here and bumped him off while he slept, held the gun close enough to singe hair, too. Droppin’ it on the floor as I went out wouldn’t take no brains at all.”