okay. Votes, I mean. I never took the sheriff personally — he would have hated any deputy at Meeker Valley and I just happened to have the job. “Let me get this straight,” the sheriff said. “You’ve got it straight,” I told him, because we’d already been over it. “I’m a simple man, Malone,” he said. “Maybe I don’t have it straight. Maybe I need to hear it again. On Saturday night you have a fight up there in a public place between two of what passes for your aristocracy. The Harrison kid beats up the Cullen kid —” “They’re not exactly kids,” I said. and stomps him a little when he’s down. That makes it an assault case for which you have witnesses.” “Cullen didn’t want to press charges.” “So you said. He just told you he wanted revenge.” “Not in so many words,” I said. “Right. Not in so many words. And the next thing that happens is the Harrison horse is killed. Except it's not just any old farm horse. It’s a gilt- edged triple-pedigreed racehorse worth in the six figures.” “They say.” “They say. And probably have a bill of sale that says so, too. Any doubts about who killed that horse, Malone?” “Not enough to lose sleep over.” “Good. I’d hate for you to lose any sleep at your age. Now let’s look at this. We’ve got the motive and the opportunity and we know who the perpetrator is. So it seems to me there’s only two things we can do — either we turn the case over to the SPCA or we do what the taxpayers pay us to do, which is to get some evidence against the Cullen kid we can take to court.” “Or the Harrisons can bring a civil action,” I said, “in which case they can hire their own investigators. But I’ll make you a promise, sheriff. If they come up with anything I overlooked, I’ll take off my hat and put salt and pepper on it so you can have the pleasure of watching me chew it up and eat it. You name where and when.” That comment tended to end the conversation. Except the sheriff leaned across his desk and asked, “What was it like? I mean just the head?” “It was nothing you’d go out of your way to keep in mind a long time,” I said. Which was true. A horse’s head looks bigger on the ground than it does when it’s standing up looking at you attached to the rest of the animal, which in this case had plain disappeared. The head of Big Isaac looked gruesome and it looked forlorn, too, and when you consider the kind of sleek hot-eyed animal it had been when it was alive, you can understand why Blaine Harrison wanted revenge against Royal Cullen. Which was why Royal Cullen started carrying a gun. “Don’t lecture me, Malone!” he said. “I fought the guy once and he about killed me — and compared to now he wasn’t even mad then!” “That doesn’t give you the right to carry a gun,” I said. Cullen raised his arms and spun around. “You see a gun?” “Because I’ll run you in for it,” I said, which was an empty threat, and I was just as empty when I told Blaine Harrison to simmer down and back off. So what it boiled down to was I talked to both of them like a Dutch uncle and did exactly as much good as if I hadn’t talked to either one in the first place. The sheriff said later, “So he was carrying a gun all along.” “More than likely,” I said. “And you didn’t see it.” “I didn’t frisk him,” I said. The gun was a twenty-five-caliber automatic, one of those little Spanish Beretta - jobs you can hide in the palm of your The head of Big Isaac looked gruesome and it looked forlorn, too, and when you consider the kind of sleek hot-eyed animal it had been when it was alive, you can understand why Blaine Harrison wanted revenge against Royal Cullen. hand or practically in your BVDs. Cullen could have had it in his back pocket or even in the top of his boot. It just plain wasn’t the kind of sidearm you’d look for a rancher to carry, not even an Ivy League gentleman rancher, but he wasn’t planning any sharpshooting with it. It was strictly a short-range self-defense weapon. Because beneath his swagger Royal Cullen was terrified of Blaine Harrison. That came out at the trial where, when the chips were down and it came to a plea of self-defense, Cullen wasn’t telling me or anybody else to stay out of it anymore because it was family. It was between him and the high wall at Salem by then and he was trying to get everybody into it who he could get into it, except his family should have brought somebody into it other than that damn fool lawyer Tobb who didn’t ask for a change of venue. The Cullens brought Tobb out to Pendleton from some big high- powered Portland firm, and the fact is that Tobb put on a good defense. And this time Royal Cullen had more to show than a purple eye and a scraped cheek. He had three busted ribs, a flat nose, a couple of missing teeth, some internal hemorrhaging, a concussion and part of a shaved head where they took stitches. Banged up like that he made a good witness for himself and nobody on the jury or off could have doubted him. It all came out at the trial. One, how Blaine Harrison had beat him up once already and the witnesses testified it was obvious he could easy have done it again since it was their opinion Royal Cullen didn’t have a chance against Harrison in a fair fight. Two, how Blaine Harrison let it be known he was coming after Cullen again because Cullen had killed the horse Big Isaac. There was no mystery about that. And three, how he actually did come after Cullen again and this time with no spectators to break it up. He came after him at night in a dark place and the jury not only had Royal Cullen’s word on it but Doc Henry’s too, that Blaine Harrison could have killed him. Truly could have. On the stand Cullen said he thought he was a goner, that he’d been beat up before but never like that. He said it was only after he got kicked in the head and knew he was already busted up inside and Blaine Harrison gave no sign of quitting that hq knew it was then or never so he pulled that little back- pocket automatic which the jury knew was no sharpshooting pistol but was pure and simply protection against the known and broadcast threat that Blaine Harrison was going to come after him. And he hit Harrison in the aorta with his first and only shot. Cullen was straightforward about it. He’d dragged himself over to Doc Henry’s and even banged up like he was, he’d sent Doc Henry to look after Harrison first thing, and he’d phoned me himself from the doc’s so I was there when Doc was patching him up. And I got Cullen’s statement which was the same then as he gave on the witness stand. And which described an act of selfdefense as pure as a Blue Mountain snowfall. They could have charged Cullen with carrying a concealed weapon, which I argued for, but the sheriff and the prosecutor smelled headlines so they took a murder indictment to the grand jury and got a true bill on it, and that’s what they charged Cullen with. Which was dumb because Cullen should have been acquitted easy, especially when he made such a good witness banged up like he was and when Tobb put on such a good defense with no little mistakes at all except for one big one he couldn’t afford to make, and by that I mean not asking for a change of venue. Because the jury called it manslaughter. Not for killing Blaine Harrison, which they knew was selfdefense, but because Royal Cullen had killed the damn horse, which he wasn’t even accused of. See they take horses seriously in ranch country, which was something Tobb never quite figured out. Local people couldn’t get it out of their head, not just that Cullen killed the animal, but the way he slaughtered it, and the fact that it wasn’t just any horse but was a six-figure thoroughbred. So the jury sent Royal Cullen down to the joint. Not for murder, which would have been too outrageous, but for manslaughter which they knew he didn’t commit but would get him a year in the pen, which was just about what they figured he had coming. And that’s how the scales of Lady Justice got balanced, no matter how complicated the reasoning that got them balanced, and like I said at the start, nobody thought there was any mystery to the whole chain of events. Until little Cookie Vernon climbed Jeb Reiser’s fence and broke his arm coming in second-best wrestling a fat hog which didn’t want a rope tied to it, not even around its neck which it’s debatable it even has. And Jeb Reiser called me to come get the would-be pig rustler, not wanting himself to get any more involved with a Vernon than necessary, not even a ten-year-old one. So I drove Cookie into town to Doc Henry’s, him holding his arm and me figuring, if I read those grey puddles of his eyes properly, that he wasn’t scared about riding in a county car accused of pig-thievery as much as he was scared about what his daddy was going to do to him when he got home. Not for trying to steal the hog but for failing to make a success of the venture. “Because he’s got a cravin’ for ham,” Cookie said. Oh, I can get people to talk if you give me time enough. Like they say, put a red suit on me and I could be a regular Santa Claus. I’d never talked much to Cookie Vernon before so the ride into town was a good chance to draw him out some. You never know what you might learn by letting people talk. Even kids. Because Cookie Vernon’s young enough so he doesn’t have it quite straight in his head about private property, which is understandable considering the way the rest of his family looks at things. So he wasn’t concerned about letting it slip, after one thing led to another and we were talking up a storm, that it wasn’t Royal Cullen after all, but it was Cookie himself and his daddy and an older brother who’d killed the horse Big Isaac. He told me matter of factly how they’d gone out to the Harrisons one night in the pickup and cut through the horse’s neck so it bled to death and after they amputated the head they meant to cut off the legs, too, to fit in the pickup. But they were worried they’d run out of time so they let the legs go and chopped them off at home. And that stopped me cold. “Young button,” I said, “as long as we’re getting along so fine here, would you mind telling me just exactly why the hell you all sneaked out there and killed that poor racehorse and went to all the trouble, which I’m sure was sizeable, of hauling it home?” He looked at me like I didn’t have brain one and answered in that tone of voice that said he didn’t have the slightest idea why it was necessary to actually explain anything so downright simple. He said, “For the meat, Sheriff Webb. We was hungry.” B RIDE YOUR BICYCLE. Bicycling is transportation at its best. It is clean, quiet, healthful and economical. With high-quality equipment chosen to suit your needs, year-round commuting by bicycle can be made practical and easy for most people. See a full-service bicycle shop near you for advice and assistance. Montlake Bicycle S h o P 2304 24th Ave. E. Seattle 329-7333 % mi. south of U.W. 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