Gyp went gingerly through the cowboys grouped at the door and vanished.
I didn’t like this public stuff. I’d rather do my questioning on the side. But to try that here would probably call for a showdown with Peery and his men, and I wasn’t quite ready for that.
“What do you know about the killing, Bardell?” I began.
“Nothing,” he said emphatically, and then went on to tell me what he knew. “Nisbet and I were in the back room, counting the day’s receipts. Chick was straightening the bar up. Nobody else was in here. It was about half-past one this morning, maybe.
“We heard the shot—right out front, and all run out there, of course. Chick was closest, so he got there first. Slim was laying in the street—dead.”
“And what happened after that?”
“Nothing. We brought him in here. Adderly and Doc Haley—who lives right across the street—and the Jew next door had heard the shot, too, and they came out and—and that’s all there was to it.”
I turned to Gyp.
He spit in a cuspidor and hunched his shoulders.
“Bardell’s give it all to you.”
“Didn’t see anything before or after except what Bardell has said?”
“Nothin’.”
“Don’t know who shot him?”
“Nope.”