He was an old-timer with a dull-blue eye and tobacco-stained blond mustache. His examination lasted not more than half an hour, after which he pronounced over a glass of rye whisky, aged seventeen years: “The way it looks to me, it would be pretty hard to kill a gent like Steve Wycombe without doin’ it in self-defense. I dunno that you could pick up any jury around this part of the world that would accuse a man of nothin’ more than self-defense even if there was eye-witnesses that seen somebody bash Steve over the head when his back was turned.” The reputation of Wycombe was in this manner its own reward. The body was carted to the town to be buried in the plot where other and hardly more honorable ancestors had lain before him, and the will which he had signed was promptly recorded and filed. The result was that the three to whom the inheritance had so strangely come could enter upon the possession at once. It was not many days later that they held a conference in the very room that had formerly been the office of the dead man.
What do You think about Silvertip's Strike (1960)?
