"THE TRAIL TO SEVEN PINES" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

mustache thoughtfully. "He was alive when you left him? Was that gun within reach?"
"I put a gun in his hand. I didn't want to leave, but the man needed a doctor if
he was goin' to live. I figure he might have made it."
Dr. Marsh had been examining the body. He looked up now. "That's true. Those wounds
are in mighty healthy condition, everything considered. What's that poultice on them?"
"Prickly pear. Indians use it to check inflammation."
"Look!" The red-faced man indicated the position of the gun. "If that isn't suicide,
what would you call it?"
Hopalong felt anger mount within him. He looked up, his blue eyes utterly cold. "That
man was alive when I left him," he repeated. "He knew he was hard hit, but he was
standin' up to it. There wasn't"-he said the words viciously-"a single streak of
yellow in that kid. He didn't kill himself.
"He must have passed out again," he continued. "Somebody sneaked down here, shot
him with his own gun, then wrapped his fingers around it. Look where that gun muzzle
is! Flush against his temple! Muzzle blast would have thrown that gun away from his
head and maybe clear out of his hand!"
Dr. Marsh nodded. "This gentleman is correct, Hadley," he said quietly. "The recoil
would have thrown it or jerked it away from the temple. Also, at that distance, the
side of the face would have been badly burned. I can see only a few grains of powder
in the skin."
The red-faced man was keeping his eyes on Cassidy. Slowly his gaze went over the
black sombrero, shirt, and trousers tucked into high stitched boots, the tied-down,
bone-handled guns, then climbed to his cold eyes and silver hair. "That puts
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THE TRAIL TO SEVEN PINES
you in a bad light," he suggested. "You were the last to see him alive."
"No." Hopalong's gaze was frosty. "The killer was the last to see him." He nodded
back along the trail. "There's another one back there. Big fellow in a frock coat."
Hopalong was getting the men placed. The man who had driven the buckboard was Harrington,
the mine super and part owner. It was on his shoulders the loss would fall. The big
red-faced man was Pony Harper. He was a horse trader who owned the livery stable
and corrals in Seven Pines and supplied beef to the mines and a railroad contracting
outfit some thirty miles away. There was another man, hollow-cheeked, with yellow
eyes and a tied-down gun; they called him Rawhide. He was searching the body in the
road.
"Somebody cleaned him out!"
"What did you expect?" Hadley asked dryly. "This here was a robbery." Grimly, Hopalong
said nothing. After what had happened to Jesse Lock, he wanted a chance to look over
the contents of the man's wallet privately before he handed it over to anyone.
Another rider was coming up the trail from town. He was a well-built, pleasant-looking
man of forty. "Howdy, Ronson!" Hadley nodded toward the dead man. "Anybody ever seen
this hombre before?"
"I've seen him." Rawhide touched his tongue to a cigarette. "This man's Sim Thacker,
the gunfighter."
"Thacker!" Ronson stared at the dead man. "Dead! Who did it?"
"That would answer a lot of other questions," Hadley said. "Looks like whoever did
it gave him his chance, then drilled him."
"And put on the finishing touches with a bullet in the head,"
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