Coming in from the right as they took the open trail again, the Cody
Road beckoned them eastward, as a side road always beckons to the true
wanderer.
"What does it run to?" asked the Groom.
"Wyoming," responded Aconite. "It's nothing but scenery and
curiosities."
"Let's follow it a little way," suggested the Bride, "and see how we
like it"
Three miles or so on the way, the surrey halted at a beautiful little
lake, which lay like a fragment broken off Yellowstone Lake, the shore
of which lay only a stone's throw to the right. They walked over to the
big lake to bid it farewell. A score of miles to the south lay Frank
Island, and still farther away, shut off by the fringe of rain from a
thunder shower, the South Arm seemed to run in behind Chicken Ridge and
take to the woods. To the southwest stood Mount Sheridan, and peeping
over his shoulder the towering Tetons solemnly refused even to glimmer
a good-by.
"For all that," said the Bride, "_au revoir_! We'll come back one of
these days, won't we, Billy?"
"Sure!" said Billy. "I'm coming up to put in a power plant in the Grand
Cañon, one of these days. This scenery lacks the refining touch of the
spillway and the penstock!"
Fifteen minutes' driving brought them to the second halt, a big basin of
water, from which steam issued in a myriad of vents. Aconite suggested
that they stroll down to the beach and take a look at the water. They
found it in a slow turmoil, the mud rising from the bottom in little
fountains of turbidity, the whole effect being that which might be
expected if some mud-eating giant were watching his evening porridge,
expecting it momentarily to boil.
"I don't care much for this," said the Bride.
"I'm not crazy about it myself," assented the Artist.
"What's the next marvel?" asked the Colonel.
"Wedded trees," said Aconite.
"Getting sated with 'em," said the Poet.
"Apollinaris Springs, Sylvan Lake, fine views of Yellowstone Lake and
the mountains, bully rocks and things clear to Cody."
"And on the other hand," said the Professor, "what are the features on
the regular road from which we have diverged?"
"Everything you come to see," responded Aconite. "Mud Volcano, with a
clear spring in the grotto right by it; Mud Geyser, off watch for a year
or more; Trout Creek, doubled around into the N.P. trade-mark; Sulphur
Mountain--we can camp right near there, and see it in the morning, when
we ought to see it--and on beyond, the Grand Cañon and everything.
Besides--unless we go that-a-way, we'll never git back unless we come by
the Burlington around by Toluca and Billings. Of course, it's all the
same to me--I don't keer if we never go back or git anywhere. I'm havin'
a good time."
"Turn the plugs around," said the Colonel.
In half an hour or so they were back on the great north road again. The
horses seemed to feel the pull of the stable--still days ahead, for they
trotted briskly along, while the tourists gazed with sated eyes on the
beautiful Yellowstone River on the right hand, its pools splashing with
the plunges of the great trout; and on their left the charming mountain
scenery. Even the grotesque Mud Volcano, with its suggestions of the
horrible and uncouth, failed to elicit the screams from the Bride, or
the ejaculations of amazement from the men which characterized their
deliverances earlier in the journey. Entering Hayden Valley, they were
delighted at the sight in the middle distance of a dozen or more
buffaloes, which held up their heads for a long look, and disappeared
into the bushes. Not ten minutes later, fifty or sixty elk walked down
to the Yellowstone to drink, crossing the road within a minute of the
tourists' passage. Aconite pulled up in the shadow of Sulphur Mountain,
the Hired Man, with the assistance of the party, soon had a fine fire
blazing, and presently a pan of trout, hooked by the Bride, the Groom,
the Artist and the Poet, and dressed by the skilful Aconite, were doing
to a turn on the skillet.
The Hired Man, realizing that he was under obligation to tell his
version of the "darndest thing" in his experience, was solemn, as befits
a public performer. When the psychological moment was proclaimed by the
falling down into a roseate pile of coals of the last log for the
night, he discharged his duty and told this unimportant tale:
HENRY PETERS'S SIGNATURE
THE HIRED MAN'S SECOND TALE
The Colonel's story of how the law and the courts work, reminded me of
what happened to old Hen Peters and his forty-second nephew, Hank. It
all arose from a debate at the literary at the Bollinger school-house
back in Iowa.
You see, old Hen's girl Fanny come home from the State Normal at Cedar
Falls as full of social uplift as a yeast-cake, and framed up this
literary. It was a lulu of a society, and nights when the sledding was
good, the teams just surrounded the lot, and the bells jingled as
uplifting as you could ask.
The night of the scrap Hank brought Fanny. The debate was on which was
the most terrible scourge, fire or water. Hank was on the negative, and
Fanny's father on the affirmative. Old Hen spoke of the way prairie
fires devastated things in an early day, and read history, and gave a
beautiful tribute to the Chicago fire and the O'Leary cow. Hank coughed
with the dust kicked up when Hen sat down, but he got back with a
rhapsody on the Hoang-Ho floods, and the wet season in Noah's time. He
said that his honorable opponent ought to take a moment or two from time
to time to ascertain the properties of water as a scourge, as an inward
remedy, and as a lotion.
Now besides having an appetite for red-eye, old Hen was whiskery and
woolly-necked, and handling lots of tame hay, he looked sort of
unwashed. So the crowd yelled shameful and laughed; and when Hen got up
to answer, he was so mad his whiskers stood out like a rooster's hackle,
his words came out in a string like, all lapped on one another, and
blurred, and linked together so you couldn't tell one from the other;
and finally they reversed on the bobbin, and gigged back into his
system, and rumbled and reverberated around in him like a flock of wild
cattle loose in an empty barn; and the crowd got one of those giggly
fits when every one makes the other laugh till they are sore and sick.
Asa Wagstaff fell backward out of a window on to a hitching-post, and
made Brad Phelps' team break loose. Old Hen stood shaking his fist at
them and turning so red in the face that he got blue, and sat down
without saying a syllable that any one could understand. You could hear
folks hollering and screaming in fits of that laughing disease going
home, and getting out and rolling in the snow because they were in
agony, and nothing but rolling would touch the spot. But old Hen Peters
seemed to be immune.
Now, in a debate, no man is supposed to have friends or relations, and
he floors his man with anything that comes handy, and Hank never dreamed
that Hen would hold hardness when he got over his mad fit. Hank and
Fanny had things all fixed up, and had been pricing things at the Banner
Store, and sitting up as late as two o'clock; but the next Sunday night
she met him at the door and told him maybe he'd better not come into the
sitting-room till her pa cooled off. Hank was knocked off his feet, and
they stood out in the hall talking sort of tragic until old Hen yelled
"Fanny!" from the sitting-room, and they pretty near jumped out of their
skins, and stood farther apart, and Fanny went in. In the spring there
was a row over the line fence, ending in a devil's lane. Fanny looked
pretty blue, only when she was fighting with her pa. Hen would lecture
about the two Peters brothers that came across in 1720, and how all
Peterses that were not descended from them were Nimshies and impostors.
"I despise and hate," says he, "a Nimshi and an impostor."
Then Fanny would shoot back a remark about the Iowa _Herald's_ college,
and when was her pa going to paint the Peters coat-of-arms on the
hay-rake and the hog-house, using sarcasm that no man could understand
after being out of school as long as her father had been. Sometimes the
old man would forget the spurious registry of the Hank family in the
Peters herd-book, and would argue that relations, even the most remote
and back-fence kind, ought to be prosecuted if they even dreamed of
marrying; and then Fanny would say that it is such a pleasure to know
that folks are not always related when they claim to be. Hen would then
cuss me for not taking care of my horses' shoulders or something, and
things would get no better rapidly.
Young folks need to meet once in a while in order to keep right with
each other, and Jim Miller and I often spoke of the way old Hen was
splitting Hank and Fanny apart. Then an Illinois man come out and bought
Hank out at a hundred an acre, and Hank wadded his money into his
pocket, and bid good-by to the neighborhood for good and all. He never
crossed the township line again. Fanny flirted like sixty, and cried
when she was alone; but old Hen was as tickled as a colt.
It seemed like a judgment on Hen for driving as good a man as Hank to
Dakota to have Fillmore Smythe begin yelping on his trail. His first
yelp was a letter, asking Hen to call and pay a three-hundred-dollar
note Fillmore had for collection. And here's where the law begins to
seep into the story. Hen had Fanny type-write a scorching answer, saying
that Hen Peters had discounted his bills since before Fillmore Smythe
was unfortunately born, and didn't owe no man a cent; and Hen was so mad
that he kicked a fifty-dollar collie pup, and hurt its feelings so it
never would work, but went to killing young pigs and sheep the way a
collie will if you ever sour their nature by licking them. Funny about
collies.
One day old Hen come in from the silo, and saw Fillmore Smythe's team
tied at the gate, and Fillmore sitting with Fanny on the stoop, reading
_Lucile_.
"I hope I see you well, Mr. Peters," said the lawyer, kind of
smooth-like.
"None the better for seein' you, sir," said Hen, jamming his mouth shut
when he got through so his mustache and whiskers were all inserted into
each other.
Now this was no way to treat a person from town, and Fanny began saying
how wonderful the sunset was last night, and asking did he ever see the
moon-vine flowers pop out in bloom in the gloaming, and to curb her neck
and step high the way they do when they're bitted in college.
"Any partic'lar business here?" asked old Hen.
"Ah, yes!" said Smythe. "In addition to the pleasure of seeing you and
your accomplished family, I desired a conference as to the curious way
in which that little note--"
"Well, now that you've seen my accomplished family as much as I want you
to," growled Hen, "you can git. I told you all I'm goin' to about what
you call my note."
"But," said Fillmore, sort of like he was currying a kicking mule, "if
you'd consent to look at it, I'm sure it would all return to your mind!"
Hen fired him off the place, though, and he sued Hen. The old man was
affected a good deal like the collie pup, and mulled it over, and got
sour on the world, especially lawyers that blackmailed and forged. He
said he knew well enough that Smythe either did it or knew who did, and
that every lawyer ought to be hung. I argued for imprisonment for the
first offense for a no-account lawyer like Smythe, with a life sentence
if it was proved that he knew any law, and the death penalty for good
lawyers like Judge McKenzie; and Hen was so mad at me for what I said
that he wouldn't let me have the top buggy the next Sunday night when I
needed it the worst way.
The big doings come off when the case came up to be tried. I quit
hauling ensilage corn, and went with Fanny and the old folks up to the
county seat to give testimony that Hen never signed that note. Fanny
stayed with Phoebe Relyea; but the rest of us stopped at the
Accidental Hotel, where most of the jurors and others tangled up in
court stayed too.
The lawyer in the case ahead of us was a new-comer, and strung it out
day after day to advertise himself, and yelled so you could hear him
over in the band-stand, to show his ability. Hen, all the time, was
getting more and more morbid, and forgot his temperance vows, and tried
to talk about the case to everybody. About half the time it would be a
juryman he would try to confide in, and this made trouble on account of
their thinking he was trying to influence them. One night Hen was owly
as sin, drinking with Walker Swayne from Pleasant Valley Township; and
when he cried into his beer because Fillmore Smythe was trying to
swindle him and blast his good name, Walker slapped him for approaching
him on a case he might be called to sit on. I put Hen to bed at the
Revere House, and told Mrs. Peters he'd been called home. She 'phoned
out to have him count the young turkeys, and the Swede second man had no
more sense than to say he had not been there, instead of placing him
where they had no telephone, as an honest hired man with any sprawl
would have done. You couldn't trust this Swede as far as you could throw
a thesaurus by the tail. I am not saying that he was corrupt; but he was
just thumb-hand-sided and lummoxy, and blurted, "Hae ain't bane hare"
into the transmitter with never a thought of the danger of telling the
truth. Mrs. Peters didn't know what to be distressed about, and just
because I'm paid the princely salary I get for saying nothing about such
things, she jumped on me like a duck on a June-bug.
When Hen and I went to McKenzie's office the night before our case came
up, the lawyer was worried. He asked us if we knew who was going to
testify against us.
"No," snapped Hen; "an' I don't care. Nobody ever saw me sign that note,
and it don't make any matter."
Then he went on to tell what great friends he and Judge Brockway used to
be, when the judge used to shoot prairie-chickens in Hen's stubble, and
Mrs. Peters cooked the chickens for the judge.
"Brockway thinks as much of me as a brother," said Hen. "He told me as
much when he was running for judge. He won't see me stuck."
This didn't seem to impress Judge McKenzie much. He still looked
worried, and said the other side had got every banker in town on their
side as handwriting experts.
"I don't like the looks of things," said he.
Hen flew mad at the idea of his lawyer's hinting that any man could get
stuck in such a case. The judge tried to explain, and Hen asked him how
much the other side was paying him, and the judge threw up his job.
Pretty soon, though, Hen got him to take a new retainer of fifteen
dollars, and he opened a new account in his books. This made Hen feel
good, for the judge was great with juries when he was sober. He was
good and sober now, for he had just taken the drinking cure for the
third time. We had lots of faith in Providence and McKenzie, but were
scary as three-year-olds that night at any strange noise in the brush.
You know how it is when you feel that way.
Things went wrong the next morning. So many of the jurors said that Hen
had talked to them that Judge Brockway just glared at Hen, and said that
the court was not favorably impressed by tactics of that sort.
Walker Swayne told how he had slapped Hen's chops to drive off his
improper advances, and Judge Brockway said that he could not condone
breaches of the peace; but a juror, like a woman, was justified if any
one; and when old Hen asked Mac for the Lord's sake, were there any
women sitting on this case, Brockway wilted Hen again with a look.
I asked Hen at recess if he thought Brockway would ask him as a friend
and brother to sit up on the bench, and he flared up and said Brock was
all right, but was disguising his feelings as a judge.
"He's got a disguise that's a bird," said I, and Hen said I might
consider myself discharged; but wrote me a note after court took up,
hiring me back.
The next juror up related another case of Hen's vile tactics, and the
judge threatened to send him to jail if anything more bobbed up. Hen
fell back into his chair limpsy, like dropping a wet string,--all spiral
like,--and everybody looked at us in horror for our pollyfoxing with the
jury. As a matter of fact, in his state of beer and overconfidingness,
Hen would have wept on the breast of a wooden Indian that would have
held still while he told of the octopus and its forgeries. In all the
time I worked for him, he never tried once to destroy the jury system or
his country's liberty.
Finally they found twelve men that didn't know anything about the case
or anything, and had no opinions or prejudices for or against anything,
and the lawyers told the jury what they expected to prove.
"The sacred system of trial by jury," said Fillmore Smythe, "has been
saved from the attacks of the defendant by an incorruptible court.
Placed on trial before this intelligent jury, what the defendant may do
I can not even guess; but we have here in court his note, signed in his
own proper person."
"'T ain't so!" busted out Hen, in his own improper person. "You hain't
got no such note!"
"One more interruption of this sort," said the judge, peeking down at
Hen, "and the example that I'll make of _you_ won't soon be forgotten.
Proceed, Mr. Smythe!"
"Concealing his love!" whispers I to Hen; and he put the leg of his
chair on my foot and ground it around till I almost yelled.
When they had marked the note "Exhibit A" the way they do, Smythe said
"Plaintiff rests," though they didn't seem near as tired as our side
was, and the court let out for noon. They let McKenzie take the note
with him to look at. There it was on one of those blanks that it cost me
a good claim in Kansas once to practise writing on, and I never got to
be much of a penman either; it was signed "Henry Peters" as natural as
life.
"Well," questioned Mac, as Hen turned it over, "what do you say to it,
Henry?"
I could feel that all the time McKenzie had had a hunch that Hen had
really signed the note, and Hen felt it, too, and he threw to the winds
the remains of his last conversion, and his fear that Mac would strike
again, and talked as bad as if he was learning a calf to drink.
"Why, you scoundrelly Keeley graduate," he yelled, "what did I tell
you! That's a forgery, as any one but a half-witted pettifogger could
see by lookin' at it!"
"I sever my connection with this case right now," said Mac, away down in
his chest, and as dignified as a ring-master. "No inebriated litigant
can refer to the struggle and expense I have incurred in lifting myself
to a nobler plane of self-control, and then call for my skill and
erudition in extricating him from the quagmire of the law in which his
imprudences have immeshed him. Go, sir, to some practitioner so far lost
to manhood as to be able to resist the temptation to brain you with his
notary-public's seal. Leave me to my books!"
Mac went into the next room and shut the door, but did not lock it.
"I can see," said Colonel Baggs, "the wisdom of leaving it on the
latch."
I took and apologized for Hen; but Mac stuck his nose in a book and
waved me away. If Hen had been a little drunker he would have cried; and
I went back to woo McKenzie some more. Finally, he agreed to come into
the case again, on payment of another retainer fee of twenty dollars.
Hen was game, and skinned a double-X off his roll without a flinch. Mac
opened up a new account in his books, and Hen, for my successful
diplomacy, raised my wages two dollars a month. It was a great lesson to
me.
Of course I could see that it was not Hen's signature; for his way of
writing was Spencerian, modified by handling a fork, shucking corn, and
by the ink drying up while he was thinking. The name on the note was
kind of backhand. Mac asked about other Henry Peterses, and Hen told him
that there was a man that passed by that name in the county a year or so
back, but that he never had credit for three hundred cents, never bought
any such machinery, and had escaped to Dakota.
When old Hen testified, he had one of his spluttery spells of reverse
English caused by his language getting wound on the shafting, and his
denying the signature didn't seem to make much impression on any one.
Smythe made him admit that he had bought the tools, and had no
check-stub of the payment; and when he said he paid Bloxham in cash,
Smythe laid back and grinned, and McKenzie moved that the grin be took
down by the reporter, so he could move to strike it out.
Everybody just seemed to despise us but Mac; and I was as ashamed as a
dog. This Bloxham, the machine agent, was dead, and most everybody there
had been to his funeral; but it took half an hour to prove his demise.
Two jurors went to sleep on this, and one of them hollered "Whay! whay!"
in his sleep, like he was driving stock, and Brockway pounded and glared
at _us_ for it. I wished I was back with Ole running the silage cutter.
All this time we kind of lost sight of Mrs. Peters and Fanny. Fanny sent
some word over to the Accidental the second evening, and her mother went
over to Relyea's, and came back kind of fluttery. I was sent to Fanny
with a suit-case of dresses her mother had there, and Fanny was in the
awfullest taking with blushing and her breath fluttering like a
fanning-mill with palpitation of the heart that I couldn't think what
was the matter with her. She had never blushed at seeing me before. I
began to see what a pretty girl she was; but I couldn't think of tying
myself down, even if she did. She came up close to me, shook hands with
me, and bid me good-by when I came away. This was a sign she wanted to
hold some one's hand or was going away; and I knew she wasn't expected
to go away. It set me to thinking. Mac said he wouldn't want her
testimony until the surrey-butter part, if then. I made up my mind I'd
go up and talk with her once in a while, instead of sticking around
down-town. But this trial absorbed my attention when the experts came
on.
Smythe had had a magnification made of the name on the note, and the one
on old Hen's letter, and every banker in town went on and swore about
these names. John Smythe, Fillmore's half-brother, knew Hen's signature;
and had had to study handwriting so hard in the bank that he had got to
be an expert. He was always thought a kind of a ninny, but here's where
he sure did loom up with the knowledge. He acted just as smart as those
Chicago experts we read about, and living right here in the county all
the time, and never out of the bank a day! A good deal of my ability
comes from dropping into some big city like Fort Dodge or Ottumwa, or
maybe Sioux City, or Des Moines every winter, and getting on to the new
wrinkles and broadening out; but John Smythe was always behind that
brass railing, like a cow in stanchions. And yet he was able to see that
those two signatures just had to be made by the same man. This spiel was
cutting ice with the jury, and Mac roared and pointed out where they
were different; but Smythe hinted that it only seemed so because Mac was
ignorant. He could just see the same man a-making them--the way the stem
of the "P" was made, and the finish of the "y" like a pollywog's tail
made it a cinch. Hen swore under his powerful breath that it was a
dad-burned lie; but it looked awful plausible to me.
"You notice," said Fillmore, "that the name on the letter is more
scrawly and uneven?"
"Yes," said John, "but that merely means that he used a different pen or
was nervous. I think I see in the last the characteristic tremor of
anger."
This looked bad to me, for if ever a man had a right to the
characteristic tremor of anger, it was old Hen when he signed that
letter. It showed Smythe knew what he was at.
Mac showed them a lot of Hen's real signatures, but the experts said
they only made it clearer. Every one had a little curlicue or funny
business that put Hen deeper in the hole; and he finally chucked the
bunch, all the reporter didn't have, in the stove. Fillmore Smythe
inflated himself and blew up at this; but Brockway, still concealing his
love, said that while it looked bad, and the jury might consider this
destruction of evidence as one of the facts, the papers belonged to
defendant and the court didn't see fit to do anything. Our case looked
as bad as it could, and I didn't see why Smythe hollered so about it.
The jury looked on us as horse-thieves and crooks, and every time old
Hen stepped, he balled things up worse.
Whitten, of the First National, was stronger than John Smythe. He said
it was physically impossible for any man but the one that signed the
letter to have made that note; and he was an expert from away back. He
pointed out the anger tremor, too. Mac showed him how the
check-signatures all looked like that on the letter, and not like the
one on the note; but Whitten said a man was always calm when he made a
note, and mad as a hatter when he drew a check. Knowing Hen, this looked
plausible to me, and made a hit with the jury. The man that hollered
"Whay!" wrote it down on his cuff.
Ole Pete Hungerford, the note-shaver, snorted disdainfully that there
was no doubt that the note was genuine. He swore that a bogus check I
made was genuine, too; and got redder than a turkey when he found I had
made it, and said it was the work of a skilful forger. The man that
hollered "Whay!" looked at me in horror, and wrote some more on his
cuff. I felt considerable cheap.
Every expert said the same thing. I believe that there was one while
when Hen would have admitted he signed the note if they had called him
and raw-hided him enough. Hen had some hopes when Zenas Whitcher of the
Farmers' Bank had some doubts about one signature; but he flattened out
again when he found it was the one on the letter that had old Zenas
guessing, and that he was dead sure the one on the note was a
sure-enough genuine sig, only it looked as if he was trying to disguise
his hand. Fillmore seemed to think pretty well of this, and had them all
go back and swear about this disguise business. They could all see
wiggly spots now and places gone over twice where Hen had doubled on his
trail to throw pursuers off the track and disguise his hand. It begun to
look to me like Hen was up to some skulduggery,--all these smooth guys
swearing like that,--but Hen was paying me my wages and needed friends,
and I stuck. He looked down his nose like an egg-sucking pup. When I
came on to swear that it was not Hen's signature on the note, my mind
was so full of curlicues and polly-wogs' tails, and anger tremors, and
disguises, and the gall of my swearing against these big men that had
money to burn, that I went into buck fever, and was all shot to rags by
Smythe's cross-examination,--any of you fellows would be,--so that I
finally admitted that the note looked pretty good to me, and that I'd
have probably taken it for Hen's note if I'd been a banker and had it
offered to me. Mac threw up his hands, said that was all our evidence,
then went at the jury hammer and tongs, and I looked at poor old Hen all
collapsed down into his chair like a rubber snake, and I went and hid.
In the morning I crawled out, supposing that it would all be over, and
wondering where I'd find Hen; but I heard Judge McKenzie's closing
argument rolling out of the court-house windows like thunder. I didn't
care for eloquence the way I was feeling, and was just sneaking away,
when who should I run on to but Fanny walking with a fellow down under
the maples. I was shocked, for she was hanging to his arm the way no
nice girl ought to do unless it's dark. I trailed along behind to see
who it was, when the fellow turned his head quick, and I saw it was
Hank. They come up to me, Fanny still shamelessly hanging to his arm,
looking excited and foolish, like they had just experienced religion or
got engaged.
"Doc," said Hank, "we've just found out about it!"
"I've knowed it a long time," said I coldly. "What is it?"
"This lawsuit," said Hank--"is it over, or still running?"
"It's still running," I said. "Listen at the machinery rumble up there.
It's all over but the shouting, and we've got a man hired to do that.
Why?"
They never said a word, but scooted up the stairs. I strolled in and
found Mac's machinery throwed out of gear by Hank's interruption. Hen
was still collapsed, and didn't see Hank. Mac turned grandly to the
judge, and told him that a witness he had been laboring to secure the
attendance of from outside the jurisdiction had blowed in, and he wanted
the case reopened. Smythe rose buoyantly into the air and hooted, but
Brockway coldly reopened the case, and Hank was sworn. The juror that
wrote on his cuff looked disgusted, but he wrote Hank's name and age
with the rest of his notes.
"Where do you live?" asked Mac.
"South Dakota," answered Hank.
"Examine 'Exhibit A,'" said Mac proudly, handing Hank the note, "and
tell the jury when if ever you have seen it before!"
"When it was signed," said Hank.
Old Hen kind of straightened up. Fanny sat down by him, and put her arm
about him. She sure did look pretty.
"Who signed that note?" asked Mac, with his voice swelling like a double
B-flat bass tuba.
"I did," answered Hank.
"I object," yelled Smythe, trembling like a leaf.
"Overruled," said Brockway in a kind of tired way.
"Do you owe this note?" asked Mac.
"You bet I do," answered Hank, "and got the money to pay it. I went to
Dakota and forgot about the darned note. Bloxham shipped the machinery
out there to me. It's my note all right; Hen Peters never saw it till
Smythe got it."
The room was full of wilted experts. This did not appeal to them at all.
McKenzie laughed fiendishly, as if he'd had this thing arranged all the
time. The jury looked foolish, all but the one that hollered "Whay!"
and he looked mad. I could see Hen reviving, and throwing off his
grouch at Hank. Fillmore Smythe said he had a question or two in
cross-examination.
"What kin are you to the defendant?" he asked.
"That's a disputed point," replied Hank. "I dunno's I'm any by blood."
"Are you not related to him in any way?" asked Fillmore, prying into
things the way they do.
"You bet I am," spoke up Hank, looking over at Fanny, and getting red in
the face. "He don't know about it; but since night before last I've been
his son-in-law."