“Well, he had Jerry Wegley get it for me.”

“We’d like to take your word for that,” the sheriff said.

“You don’t have to take my word for it. I can show where I was two months ago. I wasn’t anywhere near Kansas City—and I’ll tell you something else, when Wegley brought up that gun, he brought up a box of shells for it. I loaded the magazine, and shoved the box with the rest of the shells way in the back part of a bureau drawer in room 620 in the Perkins Hotel. You can search the room and find the shells.”

“And you were registered as Donald Helforth there?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t give the gun to Alma Hunter?”

“Hell no! I wanted the gun myself. She didn’t need a gun. All she had to do was go to sleep. I was going to be on the job to see that nothing happened to her.”

The sheriff said, “Well, Donald, you’re out of the frying pan and into the fire. I’ll have to lock you up now and notify California that I’m holding you.”

“I killed him in self-defense,” I said.

“He was running away, wasn’t he?”

“I guess he was, but you know how those things are. You get pretty excited. I saw him start to run, and it was hard to see just what he was doing. I thought perhaps he was reaching for a gun, and—I don’t know. I guess I just got excited.”

The sheriff said, “Come on, Donald. I’ll have to take you back down and put you in the jail. I’ll try and make you as comfortable as possible. I’ll telephone the officers in California and they’ll come and get you.”

“Do I have to go back to California again?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t want to go across that strip of desert while it’s hot.”

“I don’t blame you. They’ll probably make it at night.”

“How about getting a lawyer?” I asked.

“What good would a lawyer do you?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to talk with one.”

The sheriff said, “I tell you what, Donald. I think you’d better sign a waiver of extradition and go back to California and face the music. It will look better that way.”

I shook my head. “I sign nothing,” I said.

“All right, Donald. It’s your funeral. I’ll have to lock you up. This is a big thing, you know.”

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE BED in the jail was hard. The mattress was thin. The night had turned bitterly cold, as so frequently happens in the desert during the early spring. I lay shivering and waiting.