Jean of the Lazy A | Page 8

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