Read Online American Gun Mystery by Ellery Queen - Free Book Online Page A

staring heads popped over the box-tier rail. The group of horsemen and horsewomen had been segregated, sent in a group to the other side of the arena; they were dismounted, and their horses, serene now, were pawing the earth and snorting quite peacefully. Their coats shone with the heat of their bodies after the short but strenuous gallop. The two special officers who had been stationed at each of the two main gates in the arena—at east and west—were on duty still, backed up by detectives. All the arena exits were fast closed, and guarded. No one was permitted either to enter or leave the arena.
    As Ellery ran up, he saw his father sternly eying a diminutive cowboy with bleared eyes and convex little legs.
    “Grant tells me you generally take charge of the horses,” snapped the Inspector. “What’s your name?”
    The little cowboy licked his dry lips. “Dan’l—Hank Boone. I don’t savvy this shootin’ a-tall, Inspector. Honest, I—”
    “Do you or don’t you take charge of the horses?”
    “Yess’r, reckon I do!”
    The Inspector measured him. “Were you one of that crazy yelling bunch riding behind Horne tonight?”
    “Nos’ree!” cried Boone.
    “Where were you when Horne fell off his horse?”
    “Down yonder, behin’ that west chute gate,” mumbled Boone. “When I see ole Buck passin’ in his chips, I got ole Baldy—special at the gate—to pass me through.”
    “Anybody else come through with you?”
    “Nos’r. Baldy, he an’ me—”
    “All right, Boone.” The Inspector jerked his head at a detective. “Take this man across the arena and let him get those horses together. We don’t want a stampede here.”
    Boone grinned rather feebly, and trotted off toward the horses in company with a detective. There was a temporary row of watering-troughs set up in the dirt across the arena, and he became busy leading the horses to water. The cowboys and cowgirls near by watched him stonily.
    Ellery stood quite still. This part of the job was his father’s.
    He looked around. Kit Horne was a statue with dusty knees, as pale as the dying moon, staring without expression at the crumpled heap covered by the gaudy Indian blanket on the tanbark. To each side stood protection—poor protection, one would say, for Curly Grant was grotesquely like a man whose ears have been suddenly pierced and who finds himself in a frenzied soundless world; and his father, stocky marble, might be in the grip of a paralysis which had attacked him without warning and frozen him in an attitude of dazed pain where he stood. And both men, also, looked at the gaudy blanket.
    Ellery, a not insensitive soul, looked at the blanket, too—anywhere but at those staring feminine eyeballs.
    The Inspector was saying: “Here, you—precinct man?—take, a couple of the boys and collect every goldarned gun in the joint. Yes, every one! Rustle some cards or something and tag every weapon with its owner’s name. Or bearer’s name, if he doesn’t own it. And don’t just ask for ’em; I want every man-jack and woman on this floor searched. These people are accustomed to going heeled, remember.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And,” added the Inspector thoughtfully, turning his bright little eyes on the silent trio staring at the covered body, “you might start with these folks here. The old feller, the curly-headed lad—yes, and the lady too.”
    Struck by a sudden thought, Ellery turned sharply and searched for someone. The man was not in this group about the body. The man with the single arm who had handled his horse so masterfully. …He caught sight of the one-armed rider far across the arena, sitting stolidly on the floor and flipping a Bowie knife up and down, up and down. …He turned back in time to see Wild Bill Grant raise his arms stiffly and submit to a search, his eyes still dead with pain. The holster he wore strapped about his thick waist was already empty; a detective was tagging the gun. Curly awakened suddenly, colored,