Splashes of Red by J. Frank Davis
At an Atlantic seaboard rodeo, Curly Bratton defeats Jack Marling, the Oklahoma Kid, in bulldogging while Millie Wayne watches with pride. Their expected romance is disrupted when Curly becomes infatuated with the fashionable Florrine, whose conspicuous red hat he acknowledges from the grand stand instead of Millie. Hurt and jealous, Millie rejects Curly’s dinner invitation and briefly tells him she has an engagement with Marling, though she immediately withdraws it. Curly, resentful of Marling’s attention to Millie, confronts him at the chutes. Their argument is overheard by other performers and stopped by Pres Campbell, the rodeo judge and former Texas Ranger. Curly is carrying a.45 pistol he had lent to the clown, Red Peeks, and Pres orders him to put it away. That night Marling is found shot in the back of the head in an alley by the Monaco Cabaret. Police arrest Curly after finding his recently fired pistol in his room. Curly cannot establish an alibi: upset by Millie’s rejection, he had searched for Florrine at the Monaco and other dance places, then returned to his hotel. Millie insists that Curly could not have committed such a cowardly murder, and tells Pres that Curly may have withheld information to protect Florrine. At police headquarters, Detective Moore dismisses the rodeo people as crude outsiders and assumes that Curly killed Marling over Millie. Pres controls his anger but gains little from Moore. An older detective, Graney, privately assists him. At the morgue, Pres observes that Marling was plainly shot from behind and concludes from the wound that the bullet was probably smaller than a.45. He also notices that Marling is wearing a red handkerchief, unlike his usual dress. When Pres visits Curly in jail, Curly admits he had been seeing Florrine and had gone looking for her that night, but denies meeting her or seeing Marling. Pres recognizes that Curly’s public attentions to Florrine had wounded Millie and advises him that he must prove he has learned from his foolishness. Curly realizes that he values Millie more than the city glamour that distracted him. Graney identifies Florrine as Pearl Ricotti, known as the Red Pearl, a woman connected with the Monaco crowd and married to Angelo “Quick” Rich, a gunman recently returned to town. Pres and Graney locate Rich and arrest him with a powder-stained.38 automatic. Furious, Rich confesses that he killed Marling after mistaking him for Curly: Marling wore the red handkerchief and was heading into the Monaco’s side door. Rich had been enraged by Curly’s public flirtation with Pearl and by her encouragement of the cowboy. Pres’s attention to the red handkerchief and the smaller bullet exposes the mistaken-identity killing and clears Curly.
By J. Frank Davis · First published 1970 · Genre: Detective Fiction, Murder Mystery, Western · 7,435 words
First lines
West comes East -- and proves that its own methods for crime detection work as well in the big city as they do in the God's country.
That star rodeo performer, but as bad an egg as ever moonlit a bronc, the "Oklahoma Kid," wrestled his steer to a quick fall, and the voice of "Foghorn" McNamara, holding his horse quiet to face the crowded grand stand at Speedway Park, came booming across the field to where Millie Wayne, in her cowgirl clothes, stood waiting to participate in the next event on the program.
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Genres
- Detective Fiction — The central plot concerns the investigation of Jack Marling's murder, with former Texas Ranger Pres Campbell examining clues, questioning suspects, challenging police assumptions, and identifying the real killer.
- Murder Mystery — Curly Bratton is accused after a public quarrel with the victim, while the narrative builds around motive, alibi, weapon caliber, physical evidence, and the eventual exposure of Angelo Ricotti.
- Western — The story is rooted in rodeo culture, cowboy characters, Texas Ranger experience, frontier codes of honor, firearms, and a contrast between Western and urban Eastern values.
- Crime Fiction — The murder leads into an urban criminal world involving cabarets, gangsters, bootleggers, gunmen, corruptly arrogant detectives, and a criminal husband driven by jealousy.
Tags
Western detective fiction · rodeo mystery · murder investigation · Atlantic seaboard city · early twentieth century · bulldogging competition · cowboy culture · Texas Ranger · wrongful accusation · mistaken identity · jealousy · romantic rivalry
What this Textopian page supports
Splashes of Red is listed on Textopian as a short story by J. Frank Davis, dated 1970 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Short story
- Author: J. Frank Davis
- Date: 1970 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Detective Fiction, Murder Mystery, Western, Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction
- Length: 7,435 words
- Structure: 1 section, 196 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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- Work identity for Splashes of Red by J. Frank Davis
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