An hour later we were dismounting in front of the Border Palace, going indoors.
A long, thin, blanket-wrapped body lay on two tables that had been pushed together. Half the citizens of Corkscrew were there. Behind the bar, Chick Orr’s battered face showed, hard and watchful. Gyp Rainey was sitting in a corner, rolling a cigarette with shaky fingers that sprinkled the floor with tobacco crumbs. Beside him, paying no attention to anything, not even looking up at our arrival, Mark Nisbet sat.
“By God, I’m glad to see you!” Bardell was telling me, his fat face not quite so red as it had been the day before. “This thing of having men killed at my front door has got to stop, and you’re the man to stop it!”
I noticed that the Circle H.A.R. men had not followed me into the center of the room, but had stopped in a loose semicircle just inside the street door.
I lifted a flap of the blanket and looked at the dead man. A small hole was in his forehead, over his right eye.
“Has a doctor seen him?” I asked.
“Yes,” Bardell said. “Doc Haley saw him, but couldn’t do anything. He must have been dead before he fell.”
“Can you send for Haley?”
“I reckon I can.” Bardell called to Gyp Rainey, “Run across the street and tell Doc Haley that the deputy sheriff wants to talk to him.”