Free Borden Chantry by Louis L’Amour

Chantry could eliminate none of them offhand. The trouble was that a man shot dead does not always drop in his tracks. He might have made a full turn, a half turn, or just turned his head, so the angle of the wound was of slight help, no more.
    Sighting from the spot where the body had fallen, there was a direct line of sight to the bank…the rear door of the bank or either of two upstairs windows. There was also a direct line from the back door or window of the Corral Saloon.
    Lines could also be laid out to Mary Ann Haley’s, the back of the stage company office, the stage company corrals and stable, as well as the back of the restaurant. There were just too many possibilities.
    When it came to that, there was a direct line of sight from his own kitchen to the spot where McCoy fell.
    Irritably, he shook away the thought. Bess? It was impossible. Yet out of fairness he must suspect everybody.
    If only he could come upon some clue to the man’s identity.
    Borden Chantry walked slowly up the dusty street, and turning aside, walked toward the rear corner of the Corral Saloon. The shot could have been fired from here. Carefully, he checked the area…No fresh tracks that he could make out, no cartridge shell, no indication that anyone had stood there.
    He crossed the street to the café and went between it and the post office, then walked along behind the buildings to the rear of the stage office. He had no reason to think Blazer might have shot McCoy, but he could not rule it out, either, so he scouted the area thoroughly, then around the corral and the barn where spare horses were kept for the stages.
    Nothing.
    The night was cool. It was clouding over, and it would be a dark night. Glancing toward the lights of his own windows he thought he saw his wife’s shadow against the curtain. She would be feeding the youngsters about now, his own son Tom, and Billy McCoy.
    Two men murdered…and they might be separate and distinctive crimes, but he did not believe it. He walked back between the store and the jail and out on the boardwalk.
    The street was empty as the street of a ghost town. The people were cooperating, and that was a help. No cowboys in town during the week, to speak of.
    He crossed the street to the rear corner of the bank, and drew another blank. There was no chance of getting upstairs until tomorrow. He glanced past the corner toward Hyatt Johnson’s house, a fine, big, well-built house such as befitted a banker. And a house from which the bullet might have been fired.
    He was turning away when he saw, beyond a couple of residences, the vast dark bulk of the old Simmons Freight Barn. The Simmons outfit had operated bull trains out of that barn, freighting to the western mining camps, and east and north to the railroad. A year before they had closed up shop and gone out of business, selling out when the railroad built on west. Now the place was empty.
    Or was it?
    It was by far the largest building in town, yet he had not even thought of it, for it stood empty and was somehow no longer even a topic of conversation. Yet from that building, from either the front of the building or from the loft, it would have been an easy shot—not over seventy yards, at best, from where McCoy fell.
    He started to cross to the old barn, then turned abruptly away and went across the street to the café. A light still showed there, and he could see Ed washing up.
    He opened the door and stepped in.
    â€œMarshal? Just closing up. You sure killed business tonight!”
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œDon’t be. I can stand the rest. I got me a good book and some drummer passin’ through left me a bunch of newspapers from Omaha and St. Louis. I surely do like readin’ them papers. It fair worries a body to see what the world is comin’ to! Why, the crime in them cities! You couldn’t give ’em to me. I’d rather live here where it’s safe.”
    â€œWasn’t very safe for