"Lucky you was with me all day,up to four o'clock,Lite,"Jim said."That lets you out slick and clean,seeing the doctor claims he'd been dead six hours when he seen him last night.Crofty--why,Crofty was laying in there dead when I was talking about him to you!Kinda gives a man the creeps to think of it.Who do you reckon done it,Lite?""How'n hell do _I_know?"Lite retorted irritably.
"I didn't see it done."
Jim studied awhile,an ear cocked for the signal that the coroner was ready to begin the inquest."Say,"he leaned over and whispered in Lite's ear,"where was Aleck at,all day yesterday?""Riding over in the bend,looking for black-leg signs,"said Lite promptly."Packed a lunch,same as I did."The answer seemed to satisfy Jim and to eliminate from his mind any slight suspicion he may have held,but Lite had a sudden impulse to improve upon his statement.
"I saw Aleck ride into the ranch as I was coming home,"he said.As he spoke,his face lightened as with a weight lifted from his mind.
Later,when the coroner questioned him about his movements and the movements of Aleck,Lite repeated the lie as casually as possible.It might have carried more weight with the jury if Aleck Douglas himself had not testified,just before then,that he had returned about three o'clock to the ranch and pottered around the corral with the mare and colt,and unsaddled his horse before going into the house at all.It was only when he had discovered Johnny Croft's horse at the haystack,he said,that he began to wonder where the rider could be.He had gone to the house--and found him on the kitchen floor.
Lite had not heard this statement,for the simple reason that,being a closely interested person,he had been invited to remain outside while Aleck Douglas testified.He wondered why the jury,--men whom he knew and had known for years,most of them,--looked at one another so queerly when he declared that he had seen Aleck ride home.The coroner also had given him a queer look,but he had not made any comment.
Aleck,too,had turned his head and stared at Lite in a way which Lite preferred to think he had not understood.
Beyond that one statement which had produced such a curious effect,Lite did not have anything to say that shed the faintest light upon the matter.He told where he had been,and that he had discovered the body just before Jean arrived,and that he had immediately started with her to town.The coroner did not cross-question him.Counting from four o'clock,which Jim had already named as the time of their separation,Lite would have had just about time to do the things he testified to doing.The only thing he claimed to have done and could not possibly have done,was to see Aleck Douglas riding into the coulee.Aleck himself had branded that a lie before Lite had ever uttered it.
The result was just what was to be expected.Aleck Douglas was placed under arrest,and as a prisoner he rode back to town alongside the sheriff,--an old friend of his,by the way,--to where Jean waited impatiently for news.
It was Lite who told her."It'll come out all right,"he said,in his calm way that might hide a good deal of emotion beneath it."It's just to have something to work from,--don't mean anything in particular.It's a funny way the law has got,"he explained,"of arresting the last man that saw a fellow alive,or the first one that sees him dead."Jean studied this explanation dolefully."They ought to find out the last one that saw him alive,"she said resentfully,"and arrest him,then,--and leave dad out of it.There's no sense in the law,if that's the way it works.""Well,I didn't make the law,"Lite observed,in a tone that made Jean look up curiously into his face.
"Why don't they find out who saw him last?"she repeated."Somebody did.Somebody must have gone there with him.Lite,do you know that Art Osgood came into town with his horse all in a lather of sweat,and took the afternoon train yesterday?I saw him.I met him square in the middle of the street,and he didn't even look at me.He was in a frightful hurry,and he looked all upset.If I was the law,I'd leave dad alone and get after Art Osgood.He acted to me,"she added viciously,"exactly as if he were running away!""He wasn't,though.Jim told me Art was going to leave yesterday;that was in the forenoon.He's going to Alaska,--been planning it all spring.And Carl said he was with Art till Art left to catch the train.
Somebody else from town here had seen him take the train,and asked about him.No,it wasn't Art.""Well,who was it,then?"
Never before had Lite failed to tell Jean just what she wanted to know.He failed now,and he went away as though he was glad to put distance between them.
He did not know what to think.He did not want to think.Certainly he did not want to talk,to Jean especially.For lies never came easily to the tongue of Lite Avery.It was all very well to tell Jean that he didn't know who it was;he did tell her so,and made his escape before she could read in his face the fear that he did know.It was not so easy to guard his fear from the keen eyes of his fellows,with whom he must mingle and discuss the murder,or else pay the penalty of having them suspect that he knew a great deal more about it than he admitted.
Several men tried to stop him and talk about it,but he put them off.He was due at the ranch,he said,to look after the stock.He didn't know a thing about it,anyway.
Lazy A coulee,when he rode into it,seemed to wear already an air of depression,foretaste of what was to come.The trail was filled with hoofprints,and cut deep with the wagon that had borne the dead man to town and to an unwept burial.At the gate he met Carl Douglas,riding with his head sunk deep on his chest.Lite would have avoided that meeting if he could have done so unobtrusively,but as it was,he pulled up and waited while Carl opened the wire gate and dragged it to one side.From the look of his face,Carl also would have avoided the meeting,if he could have done so.He glanced up as Lite passed through.