Splashes of red — Inside the Classic

ssly she was looking toward where Curly and the steer were rising out of the dust. It had been a wonderful throw. After exhibitions like that it had been Curly’s habit to wave his hand at her--until the previous day.

A messenger, cantering over from where old Pres Campbell sat on his horse in the center of the field, handed a slip of paper to Foghorn McNamara, who glanced at it and made due announcement:

“That bulldogger was Curly Bratton. Time, eleven and two fifths seconds. The world’s record is seven and two fifths seconds. Curly Bratton wins today’s bulldogging. Jack Marling, second. Billy Toms, third. The next event is the cowgirls’ trick-riding contest. The ladies taking part----”

Millie’s teeth shut tightly over her lower lip. Curly had not looked at her at all. He had waved his hand toward the stand--toward one spot in the stand, the same spot he had waved to yesterday afternoon, the spot where a brilliant toque hat made a splash of violent red. And under the crimson splash a feminine hand waved back.

It was a soft, pinkly manicured hand, quite different from Millie’s not unbeautiful but hard, competent ones. Millie had not failed to note the contrast when its owner--her name was Florrine--had been introduced to a lot of the performers by one of the resident managers of the show after the first afternoon’s contests. Millie had closely observed the face, too; an oval, olive face, artistically tinted, with languishing dark eyes. And the clothes.

Miss Florrine wore modish clothes; Millie, even at the moment when Curly, shaking hands with the city girl, had awkwardly murmured his delight at meeting her, had realized how they looked in comparison with her own picturesque but simple working garb. At the same moment she had sensed that the girl was attracted by Curly--as who wouldn’t be?--and that Curly was tremendously flattered and impressed.

Then, not much later, Curly and Miss Florrine had spoken together at the edge of the group, and Curly, that evening, carefully attired in his most striking raiment, had left the hotel immediately after dinner and was still absent when Millie went to bed. The previous day he had waved toward the red hat instead of at Millie. And now again on this day.

Millie would be the second on the cowgirl program, and the first contestant rode out to do her stuff. Millie cinched her horse, which did not need it, and only half heard the Oklahoma Kid as he came closer, having observed Curly’s gesture toward the stand as well as she, and suggested:

“Let’s you and me do a show or something in town tonight. Huh? Whatya say, Miss Wayne? Let’s.”

Nothing in the world was farther from Millie’s mind than going to a show or anywhere else with Jack Marling, but she was angry and her pride was hurt. She and Curly Bratton were not engaged, but everybody expected them to be. His attention had been solely for her in half a dozen Western rodeos and chance had again brought them together at this, one of the first real rodeos, and not a wild-West show, ever given on the Atlantic seaboard outside New York.

For the first day, Curly had been as attentive to her as ever--and then he had met that handsome, sophisticated girl of the red hat.

“Huh?” urged the Oklahoma Kid.

“Whatya say, Miss Wayne? A show and some good eats, somewheres.”

That was precisely what she had promised to do, that night, with Curly. Promised it on the opening day of the show, before he had seen the Florrine girl. Millie was conscious, as she straightened, that Curly was approaching now, on his way to the dressing tents. Just as he arrived within hearing, “Red” Peeks, the clown, came riding on his donkey and stopped to pass Curly a .45 caliber pistol.

“Thanky kindly,” the clown said. “No more shootin’ for today and I won’t need it tomorrow. My own’ll be fixed.”

Dressed for bulldogging and hence with no holster, Curly held the weapon in his hand as he stopped beside Millie and the Oklahoma Kid. Curly did not like the Kid, but, more, he did not like to see him talking to Millie. That he himself was thinking less of her, these days, than of the girl whose bright headdress set off her olive skin, did not alter this feeling; man in such matters is not consistent.

He hesitated a second, looked from one to the other and said:

“We got a date tonight, Millie. Will you be ready ’bout seven?”

This casual taking it for granted that he could do what he had done and not suffer her resentment stirred Millie into cold anger, but she came of a stock trained not to exhibit emotion and merely smiled as she replied:

“You must have got your nights mixed, Curly. Because tonight I’ve got an engagement with Mr. Marling.”

Curly’s face fell almost comically. He stared from her to the grinning Oklahoma Kid and opened his mouth as though to protest. Then he swallowed, turned away and walked toward the chutes.

“What time tonight, little one?” Marling asked.

He was staggered by her answer and the flash of her eyes that accompanied it.

“Not any time,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“Next contestant,” bellowed Foghorn McNamara, “is Miss Millie Wayne!”

She sprang into her saddle and was off toward the stand, while Marling, who understood some kinds of women very well but her kind not at all, gazed open-mouthed after her. Turning, he also tramped toward the chutes and found Curly Bratton, his face harshly set, standing a little apart from the other cowboys, waiting.

Curly’s voice was very low and his normal drawl was exaggerated.

“If you’ll excuse me, suh,” he said to Marling, “I’d admire to have you not meddle wi’ that lady.”

“I don’t want to have no quarrel with you, suh, but there ain’t no reason why we shouldn’t understand each other. She don’t happen to know you very well, I reckon, and of course I ain’t the one to tell her--and I don’t go round shootin’ off any backcapping talk to ladies or any one else--but she ain’t the kind----”

The Oklahoma Kid recovered from his astonishment.

“You got some nerve, telling me who’ll I’ll take out and who I won’t take out. If it wasn’t for the rules o’----”

“Sh-h-h, if you please, suh. There ain’t no reason for anybody else to know----”

Marling raised his voice even louder.

“Anybody in the wide world can know as far as I’m concerned, hombre! I pick my own girls and my own girls pick me, Millie Wayne or anybody else.”

The group at the chutes had fallen silent, ears pricked.

Bratton spoke through his teeth, hardly more than a whisper.

“I’d rather you didn’t mention no ladies’ names.”

“Who the blazes are you, to be telling me----”

A shadow fell upon them and Pres Campbell, ex-Texas Ranger, quietly wheeled his horse. His voice was level but authoritative.

“If you boys got any quarreling to do, wait till after the show. You know the rule about rowdyism. Well, I’ll enforce it against both of you if I have to. What’s it all about? If you’re kicking about your bulldogging time, Marling, you’re plumb wrong. I fined you five seconds because there wa’n’t no daylight showing between you and the steer at the dead line, but that didn’t change the result; even if you hadn’t lost that five seconds Bratton still beat you.”

“Aw, that’s all right, judge,” Marling said.

“And you, Bratton, what you got that gun in your hand for? You know there’s a rule against carrying a gun except where they’re called for in the show.”

“I lent it to Red Peeks. His was busted. He just give it back to me.”

“All right. Go put it up. And don’t let me hear any more ruckuses startin’ on this field.”

Fully master of the rodeo and its contestants, old Pres turned and cantered back to the center of the field. The Oklahoma Kid had disappeared into a tent and Curly, with not much time before the calf-roping event, hastened to his own.

Millie Wayne, unable to sleep, although the cowgirl in bed with her was piling up strength for the morrow like a child, heard the knock, not far from midnight, on the door on the next room, heard Pres Campbell’s quick call of “Who is it?” and the voice of one of the local rodeo committeemen in the hotel corridor, saying:

“Sorry to wake you up, Mr. Campbell, but one of your men’s been killed, downtown, and the police have just come and got another one for doing it.”

“What’s that?” Millie heard Campbell’s feet hit the floor, his room door open. “Who’s killed? How?”

“Marling. Curly Bratton did it, it seems. Shot him. The cops came out and found the pistol in his room. Recently fired. They had a quarrel this afternoon.”

“Come in while I get dressed. I know about that quarrel--it was over the bulldogging win. At least I thought it was; come to think of it, I didn’t hear a word of it. Where did they get to fighting? Which one went after his gun first?”

“It don’t seem to have been a fight,” the local man said. “Marling was shot in the back of the head.”

Wide-eyed, Millie swung around to sit on the edge of her bed. She heard Pres Campbell exclaim:

“The thunder he was! I’d ’a’ swore Bratton wa’n’t that kind of a boy. Does he admit it?”

“No. He says he hasn’t seen Marling since this afternoon’s show. But he can’t prove where he was this evening. Says he was downtown till ten o’clock and didn’t see anybody he knew that can alibi him.”

“Come in,” Pres invited, and she heard the door close.

A murmur of indistinguishable words followed while the Texan dressed. His close to sixty years had not lost him his habit of taking command of a situation or his ability to get into his clothes quickly, and barely five minutes had elapsed before Millie heard his decisive:

“All right, Mr. Taylor. Let’s go!”

She had thrown on a kimono and stood in her doorway as committeeman and one-time ranger came out.

“Uncle Pres!” she cried. “I couldn’t help hearing. He didn’t do it.”

“How do you know?” the local man demanded, before Campbell could speak.

“I know him. He’d never shoot anybody from behind.”

“Just what I said,” agreed the ex-ranger. “But what he seems to need is an alibi. Maybe, if you and he were together any----”

“I haven’t seen him since he went out right after supper, and then I don’t think he saw me; I just noticed him going through the lobby,” the girl said. “But it’s nonsense to charge him----”

“He and Marling quarreled this afternoon,” put in Taylor. “Over one of Mr. Campbell’s decisions.”

Millie knew nothing of the quarrel, of course. She could only say again, stubbornly:

“But he didn’t do it. You’re going to try to get him out, aren’t you, Uncle Pres?”

“Going to do everything I can,” the old man replied. “I don’t guess we’ll be able to get him turned loose tonight, but first thing in the mawnin’, if we have luck---- You go back to bed, Millie, and get your sleep. I’ll let you know how things stand first thing in the mawnin’.”

He and Taylor passed down the corridor and were standing at the elevator when Millie called him back and spoke too low for the local man to hear.

“Curly never would bring any lady’s name into a thing where it might get into the newspapers unless he was sure it wouldn’t hurt her,” she said. “He went---- I don’t know it, but there’s a girl----”

“I’ve sort of suspected there might be, noticing you two the last day or so,” Campbell remarked dryly. “Wa’n’t none of my business, of course, but I couldn’t help noticin’. Some city lady, is it?”

“She’s sat in the same place in the grand stand every day, wearing a red hat----”

“Me, I don’t notice ladies’ hats much,” Pres said. “Maybe, if you could give me a better description----”

“I was introduced to her, at the same time Curly was. Miss Florrine, her name is. She’s--she’s very pretty and well-dressed and city-acting.”

“H’mph!” grunted the ex-ranger. “And boys don’t have sense enough to know when they’re well off. Any more,” he conceded, “then they did when I was one. Who is she?”

“I don’t know. Nothing except her name. But if his alibi had to include her, and for any reason he thought she ought to be protected, he’d never tell.”

“Florrine,” said Pres. “That isn’t a common name, or hard to remember. When I get to see him, I’ll know what to ask about.”

In the detective room at police headquarters, while Taylor remained discreetly silent, Pres Campbell met a character new in his experience--the plain-clothes man promoted from pounding a beat, who had never been outside a big city, never wanted to be, and oozed contempt for every one and everything that was not metropolitan.

“You bozos with big hats,” he remarked heavily, “think you can get away with murder. Nothing to it, mister; nothing to it. This Bratton guy did it and we’ve got him. You and your gang of cowboys can’t come into this town and pull your rough stuff.”

Campbell, whose competency in crime detection could be attested by thousands of Texans, was here unfamiliar with the laws, unacquainted with police procedure and at sea as to his rights. One more familiar with Southwestern characteristics than was Detective Moore would have noted a glint in his eye and set of his jaw at the sneer. After the slightest hesitation, to be certain that he had his temper quite under command, the ex-ranger said:

“If you would be willing to tell me a little, perhaps, about how you know Bratton done it--that is, if it ain’t defeatin’ the ends of justice any way to tell---- You see, suh, I’m in a sort of way the head of this outfit of ours, being the contest judge and so forth. If there isn’t any reason why you should be afraid to tell me----”

“Say, what would make you think I might be afraid of anybody in your gang?” the detective demanded truculently. “Not any, cowboy, not any! I don’t know how your constables out West go clean up a murder, but me--first thing when a guy gets bumped off like this man of yours, I look for the frail.”

“Frail?” queried Pres.

“The skirt; the jane; the woman. And this time it was easy. This Bratton quarrels with Marling only this afternoon over her--and you know that cussed well, because you stopped ’em.”

“Me? I thought they were having words over one of my decisions.”

“Yes, you did!” scoffed the detective. “Well, they wasn’t. Half a dozen men heard the girl’s name when Marling spoke it.”

“I didn’t. What was the name?”

“Say, are you trying to kid me? You know blame well it was Wayne--Millie Wayne. One of them roughneck women with your show.”

“Mr. Moore,” said Pres, very mildly, “Miss Wayne’s a right nice young lady, suh. I’d admire not to have you speak like that about her.”

“You’d ‘admire’ for me not to speak like that about a ‘right nice’ young lady,” mimicked Moore. “Listen, fella! You ain’t out in the brush now. You’re in a town with bright lights in it. And I talk about women that get mixed up in murders like they’re supposed to be talked about. Get me?”

The briefest second Pres Campbell fought for self-control and achieved it.

“Yes, suh,” he said. “Well, if there ain’t anythin’ I can do to help----”

“When we need any help from yap deputy sheriffs, we’ll broadcast for it,” Moore answered.

“Yes, suh,” said Pres, and turned toward the door, observing that of the three or four other detectives in the room, at least two were grinning broadly. “I’ll bid you good night, suh.”

Out on the street, the local committeeman said: “Well, that’s that. I told you my being with you would probably do you more harm than good, my not being tied up with this city administration--but I don’t know as you’d have done any better if you’d gone alone. It’s never a bad idea to have a witness along when you’re talking to a man like that Moore.”

“I wanted to see Curly and I’d have liked to see Marling’s body, too,” the ex-ranger replied, “but there wa’n’t any use asking after he got so plumb insulting.”

They were walking slowly and now became conscious that footsteps behind them were quickening. As they turned a corner and passed out of sight of the police headquarters entrance, a husky voice called cautiously:

“Go on past that street light and stop.”

Campbell, over his shoulder, recognized a thickset, elderly man as having been one of the audience during his interview with Detective Moore.

Taylor whispered: “Detective Graney. One of the old-timers on the force.”

They stopped in the shadow halfway down the block and Graney came ponderously heavy-footed to stand beside them.

“Kind of a raw deal Moore give you, back there,” he remarked. “He don’t know nothing about folks from Texas, Moore don’t.”

“Do you, suh?” Campbell asked courteously.

“Well, a little,” replied the detective. “And here all I pounded after you guys for was because I got kinda used to Texas fellas in the Spanish War, and most of ’em that I run into was good sports.” He added, ingeniously: “And because this Moore--you don’t need to go repeating it, either of you, though it ain’t any secret to him I think so--is a bonehead, right.”

“He didn’t seem to consult the rest of you much,” Pres remarked tactfully.

“He never does; he knows it all himself,” said Graney. “It ain’t like he was the chief, you know. It just happens, the chief being out of town and the cap’n off duty tonight, that he’s sitting in at the top.”

Graney concluded bitterly:

“He’s a wise guy--I don’t think.”

The ex-ranger wasted no time seeking to learn what ancient departmental feud between Graney and Moore might be at the bottom of this bitterness, but asked practically:

“What can we do, friend?”

“What,” inquired the detective, “do you want to do--short of getting your man out?”

“I want to talk with him--and I want to see the man that was killed.”

“Fair enough,” Graney commented. “We’ll do the second thing first--over at the morgue. After that we’ll come back and you can see Bratton in his cell.” He explained this order of procedure by saying: “Moore goes off duty at two o’clock. The fella that takes charge then don’t like him much more’n I do.”

Taylor at this point intimated that morgues had never entered into his life and he hoped they never would. Campbell was entirely willing to excuse him from further participation in the night’s wanderings. The ex-ranger and Detective Graney, presently, were viewing the body of the reckless and once handsome Oklahoma Kid, awaiting the official autopsy that would take place in the morning.

At his first glance, the Texan spoke with relief.

“Yes,” he said. “There ain’t any doubt about his being shot from behind. I was afraid some mistake had been made about that and if it had been done from in front, it might ’a’ been a fight. Where’s the bullet?”

“We never found it,” Graney said. “The killing, you see, was out of doors. In that alley that leads up to the side door of the Monaco Cabaret.”