by W. C. Tuttle
Author of “Local Option in Loco Land,” “Pirates from Piperock,” etc.
“Anyway, I don’t believe it, ‘Magpie’,” says I, and that starts an
argument.
It don’t take much for me and that long-complected cow-trailer to start
an argument. All that one of us has got to do is to say, “I don’t think
so,” and the stuff is all off, ’cause the other one does think so and
he’s right there when it comes to telling why.
Magpie Simpkins pulls his bronc across the trail and proceeds to make a
cigaret while he ponders on the proper procedure to make me disagree
with myself.
We’re in a strange land, me and Magpie. We’ve been away over in the
Buffalo Basin country, where some misguided _hombre_ said there was
gold. It had been told to us thusly—
“They say there is gold in the Buffalo Basin.”
Just “they” was the only authority, which don’t give you nobody in
particular to kill off for lying, but me and Magpie are willing to hold
up our right hands and swear, to the best of our ability, that “they”
lied.
Punching a pack-train of burros is slow going, so we traded our
long-eared rolling-stock for a couple of broncs and saddles, and here we
are cutting across the State, aiming to hit Yaller Rock County
eventually.
“You’re wrong, Ike,” says Magpie after his smoke is going good.
“Circumstantial evidence is as good or as bad as any other kind. If it
wasn’t for circumstantial evidence we wouldn’t need a
penitentiary—especially out here, where mostly every man who is arrested
is guilty of something. Maybe he ain’t guilty of what he’s charged with,
Ike, but he’s plenty guilty of something just as bad. It ain’t noways
possible for every crime to have a witness and you can’t acquit a feller
just because he sneaked up on his criminal occupation in the dark when
everybody was in bed.”
“Just the same, I don’t believe in it,” says I. “I don’t believe in
putting a feller behind the bars just because he can’t prove he’s
innocent. Sometimes, Magpie, things figure out so a feller just can’t
prove things, and he ought to have the benefit of the doubt.”
“Feller men should be circumspect,” says Magpie wise-like.