THE TRIAL
The next morning, every available seat was filled early. People had
blocked the rough plank walks leading to the court-house long before the
doors were unlocked. The day promised to be fine, and the many teams
coming and going between Kemah and the river to pick up the Velpen
people who had crossed the ice on foot gave to the little town somewhat
of the gala appearance of fair time. The stately and blanketed Sioux
from their temporary camps on the flat were standing around,
uncommunicative, waiting for proceedings to begin. Long before the
judicial party had arrived from the hotel, the cramped room was crowded
to its limits. There was loud talking, laughing, and joking. Local wits
amused themselves and others by throwing quips at different members of
the county bar or their brethren from across the river, as they walked
to their places inside the railings with the little mannerisms that were
peculiar to each. Some swaggered with their importance; others bore
themselves with a ludicrous and exaggerated dignity; while a refreshing
few, with absolute self-unconsciousness, sat down for the work in hand.
The witty cowboys, restrained by no bothersome feelings of delicacy,
took off every one in running asides that kept the room in uproar. Men
who did not chew tobacco ate peanuts.
The door in the rear of the bar opened and Judge Dale entered. A
comparative quiet fell upon the people. He mounted to his high bench.
The clerk came in, then the court reporter. She tossed her note books on
the table, leisurely pulled off her gloves and took her place, examining
the ends of her pencils with a critical eye. It would be a busy day for
the “gal reporter.” Then Langford came shoving his way down the crowded
aisle with a sad-faced, brown-eyed, young woman in his wake, who yet
held herself erect with a proud little tilt to her chin. There was not
an empty seat outside the bar. Louise motioned, and he escorted Mary to
a place within and sat down beside her. The jurymen were all in their
chairs. Presently came in Gordon with his quiet, self-reliant manner.
Langford had been right. The County Attorney was not tired to-day.
Shortly after Gordon came Small—Small, the dynamic, whose explosives had
so often laid waste the weak and abortive independent reasoning powers
of “Old Necessity” and his sort, and were the subject of much satire and
some admiration when the legal fraternity talked “shop.” As he strode to
his place, he radiated bombs of just and telling wrath. He scintillated
with aggressiveness. With him came Jesse Black, easy and disdainful as
of old. After them, a small man came gliding in with as little commotion
as if he were sliding over the floor of a waxed dancing hall in
patent-leather pumps. He was an unassuming little man with quick,
cat-like movements which one lost if one were not on the alert. When he
had slipped into a chair next to his associate, Small, the inflammable
Small, towered above him head and shoulders.
“Every inch the criminal,” audibly observed a stranger, an Englishman
over to invest in lands for stocking a horse ranch. “Strange how they
always wear the imprint on their faces. No escaping it. I fancy that is
what the Scriptures meant by the mark of Cain.”
The remark was addressed to no one in particular, but it reached the
ears of Jim Munson, who was standing near.
“Good Lord, man!” he said, with a grin, “that’s the plumb smartest
criminal lawyer in the hull county. That’s a fac’. Lord, Lord! Him Jesse
Black?”
His risibilities continued to thus get the better of his gravity at
frequent intervals during the day. He never failed to snort aloud in
pure delight whenever he thought of it. What a tale for the boys when he
could get to them!
“These cattle men!” This time the tenderfoot communicated with
himself—he had a square chin and a direct eye; there were possibilities
in him. “Their perverted sense of the ridiculous is diabolical.”
There were others who did not know the little man. He hailed from the
southern part of the State. But Gordon knew him. He knew he was pitted
against one of the sharpest, shrewdest men of his day.
“Gentlemen, I think we are ready,” said the Judge, and the game was on
again.
The State called Paul Langford, its principal witness in default of
Williston.
“Your name, place of residence, and business?” asked the counsel for the
State.
“Paul Langford. I reside in Kemah County, and I own and operate a cattle
ranch.”
After Langford had clearly described and identified the animal in
question, Gordon continued:
“Mr. Langford, when did you first miss this steer?”
“On the fifteenth day of July last.”
“How did you happen to miss this steer?”
“My attention was called to the fact that an animal answering this
description and bearing my brand had been seen under suspicious
detention.”
“Prior to information thus received, you were not aware this creature
had either strayed away or been stolen?”
“I was not.”
“Who gave you this information, Mr. Langford?”
“George Williston of the Lazy S.”
“Now you may tell the jury in what words Williston told you about the
steer he saw.”
This, of course, was objected to and the objection was sustained by the
court, as Gordon knew it would be. He only wanted the jury to remember
that Williston could have told a damaging story had he been here, and
also to remember how mysteriously this same Williston had disappeared.
He could not have Williston or Williston’s story, but he might keep an
impression ever before these twelve men that there was a story—he knew
it and they knew it,—a story of which some crotchet of the law forbade
the telling.
“What did you do after your attention had been called to the suspicious
circumstances of the steer’s detention?”
“I informed my boys of what I had heard, and sent them out to look for
the steer.”
“That same day?”
“Yes.”
“Were they successful?”
“No.”
“Did this steer have a particular stamping ground?”
“He did.”
“Where was that?”
“He always ranged with a bunch on what we call the home range.”
“Near the ranch house?”
“Within half a mile.”
“Did you look for him yourself?”
“I did.”
“He was not on this home grazing ground?”
“He was not.”
“Did you look elsewhere for him?”
“We did.”
“Where?”
“We rode the free ranges for several days—wherever any of my cattle held
out.”
“How many days did you say you rode?”
“Why, we continued to look sharp until my boy, Munson, found him the day
before the preliminary at the Velpen stock-yards, on the point of being
shipped to Sioux City.”
“You went to Velpen to identify this steer?”
“I did.”
“It was your steer?”
“Yes.”
“The same for which you had been searching so long?”
“The very same.”
“It was wearing your brand?”
“It was not.”
“What brand was it wearing?”
“J R.”
“Where was it?”
“On the right hip.”
“Where do you usually put your brand, Mr. Langford?”
“On the right hip.”
“Do you always brand your cattle there?”
“Always.”
“Do you know any J R outfit?”
“I do not.”
Gordon nodded to Small. His examination had been straightforward and to
the point. He had drawn alert and confident answers from his witness.
Involuntarily, he glanced at Louise, who had not seemed to be working at
all during this clean-cut dialogue. She flashed a fleeting smile at him.
He knew he was out of sympathy with the great majority of the people
down there in front. He did not seem to care so much now. A great
medicine is a womanly and an understanding smile. It flushed his face a
bit, too.
Langford was most unsatisfactory under cross-examination. He never
contradicted himself, and was a trifle contemptuous of any effort to
tangle him up in threads of his own weaving. The little man touched
Small on the arm and whispered to him.
“Mr. Langford,” said Small, in a weighty voice, “you travel a great
deal, I believe?”
“I do.”
“For pleasure, maybe?” with a mysterious inflection.
“Partly.”
“Business as well?”
“Business as well.”
“Just prior to the arrest of the defendant,” insinuatingly, “you were
away?”
“How long prior do you mean?”
“Say a week.”
“No.”
“Two weeks?”
“Yes.”
“You had been away some time?”
“The better part of a year,” confessed Langford, with engaging candor.
“Yes. Now, Mr. Langford, I should like you to tell me about how many
cattle you range—in round numbers.”
“About five thousand head.”
“Yes. Now, Mr. Langford, you who count your cattle by the thousands, on
your own sworn word you have been out of the country a year. Don’t you
think you are asking this jury to swallow a pretty big mouthful when you
ask them to believe that you could so unmistakably distinguish this one
poor ornery steer, who has so little to distinguish him from thousands
of others?”
“I have owned that spotted steer for years,” said Langford, composedly.
“I have never sold him because he was rather an odd creature and so
cantankerous that we dubbed him the Three Bars mascot.”
Gordon called Jim Munson.
“What is your name?”
“Gosh!”
The question was unexpected. Was there any one in the county who did not
know Jim Munson? And Dick Gordon of all people! Then he remembered that
the Boss had been asked the same question, so it must be all right. But
the ways of the court were surely mysterious and ofttimes foolish.
“Jim Munson. Jim Munson’s my name—yep.”
Gordon smiled.
“You needn’t insist on it, Mr. Munson,” he advised. “We know it now.
Where do you live?”
“Hellity damn! I live at the Three Bars ranch.”
“In Kemah County?”
“It sure is.”
“What is your business, Mr. Munson?”
“Jim’s shorter, Dick. Well, I work for the Boss, Mr. Paul Langford.”
“In what capacity?”
“If you mean what do I do, why, I ride the range, I punch cows, I always
go on the round-up, I’m a fair bronco-breaker and I make up bunks and
clean lamp chimblies between times,” he recited, glibly, bound to be
terse yet explicit, by advice of the Boss.
There was a gale of laughter in the bar. Even the Court smiled.
“Oh, Jim! Jim! You have perjured yourself already!” murmured the Boss.
“Clean lamp chimneys—ye gods!”
“Well, grin away!” exploded Jim, his quick ire rising. He had forgotten
that Judge Dale’s court was not like Justice McAllister’s. His fingers
fairly itched to draw a pistol and make the scoffers laugh and dance to
a little music of his own. But something in Gordon’s steady though
seemingly careless gaze brought him back to the seriousness of the scene
they were playing—without guns.
The examination proceeded. The air was getting stifling. Windows were
thrown open. Damp-looking clouds had arisen from nowhere seemingly and
spread over the little prairie town, over the river and the hills. It
was very warm. Weather-seasoned inhabitants would have predicted storm
had they not been otherwise engaged. There was no breath of air
stirring. Mrs. Higgins had said it was a sorry day for the cattle when
the river was running in December. Others had said so and so believed,
but people were not thinking of the cattle now. One big-boned,
long-horned steer held the stage alone.
The State proceeded to Munson’s identification of the steer in question.
After many and searching questions, Gordon asked the witness:
“Jim, would you be willing to swear that the steer you had held over at
the stock-yards was the very same steer that was the mascot of the Three
Bars ranch?”
This was Jim’s big opportunity.
“Know Mag? Swear to Mag? Dick, I would know Mag ef I met him on the
golden streets of the eternal city or ef my eyes was full o’ soundin’
cataracts! Yep.”
“I am not asking such an impossible feat, Mr. Munson,” cut in Gordon,
nettled by the digressions of one of his most important witnesses.
“Answer briefly, please. Would you be willing to swear?”
Jim was jerked back to the beaten track by the sharp incision of
Gordon’s rebuke. No, this was indeed not Jimmie Mac’s court.
“Yep,” he answered, shortly.
Billy Brown was called. After the preliminary questions, Gordon said to
him:
“Now, Mr. Brown, please tell the jury how you came into possession of
the steer.”
“Well, I was shippin’ a couple o’ car loads to Sioux City, and I was
drivin’ the bunch myself with a couple o’ hands when I meets up with
Jesse Black here. He was herdin’ a likely little bunch o’ a half dozen
or so—among ’em this spotted feller. He said he wasn’t shippin’ any this
Fall, but these were for sale—part of a lot he had bought from Yellow
Wolf. So the upshot of the matter was, I took ’em off his hands. I was
just lackin’ ’bout that many to make a good, clean, two cars full.”
“You took a bill-of-sale for them, of course, Mr. Brown?”
“I sure did. I’m too old a hand to buy without a bill-o’-sale.”
The document was produced, marked as an exhibit, and offered in
evidence.
The hearing of testimony for the State went on all through that day. It
was late when the State rested its case—so late that the defence would
not be taken up until the following day. It was all in—for weal or for
woe. In some way, all of the State’s witnesses—with the possible
exception of Munson, who would argue with the angel Gabriel at the last
day and offer to give him lessons in trumpet blowing—had been imbued
with the earnest, honest, straightforward policy of the State’s counsel.
Gordon’s friends were hopeful. Langford was jubilant, and he believed in
the tolerable integrity of Gordon’s hard-won jury. Gordon’s presentation
of the case thus far had made him friends; fickle friends maybe, who
would turn when the wind turned—to-morrow,—but true it was that when
court adjourned late in the afternoon, many who had jeered at him as a
visionary or an unwelcome meddler acknowledged to themselves that they
might have erred in their judgment.
As on the previous night, Gordon was tired. He walked aimlessly to a
window within the bar and leaned against it, looking at the still,
oppressive, cloudy dampness outside, with the early December darkness
coming on apace. Lights were already twinkling in kitchens where
housewives were busy with the evening meal.
“Well, Dick,” said Langford, coming up cheery and confident.
“Well, Paul, it’s all in.”
“And well in, old man.”
“I—don’t know, Paul. I hope so. That quiet little man from down country
has not been much heard from, you know. I am afraid, a moral uplift
isn’t my stunt. I’m tired! I feel like a rag.”
Langford was called away for a moment. When he returned, Gordon was
gone. He was not at supper.
“He went away on his horse,” explained Louise, in answer to Langford’s
unspoken question. “I saw him ride into the country.”
When the party separated for the night, Gordon had not yet returned.