 he had bought a likely little bunch from some English
feller who was skipping the country--starved out and homesick--and hadn't
put 'em on the range yet. He said J R was the English feller's brand. I
didn't suspicion no underhand dealin's. Yellow Wolf's always treated me
white before, so I bargained for this here chap and three or four others
and then pulled out for home driving the bunch. They fed at home for a
spell and then I decided to put 'em on the range. On the way I fell in
with Billy Brown here. He was dead set on havin' the lot to fill in the
chinks of the two carloads he was shippin', so I up and lets him have
'em. I showed him this here bill-o'-sale from Yellow Wolf and made him
out one from me, and that was all there was to it. He rode on to Velpen,
and I turned on my trail."

It was a straight story, and apparently damaging for the prosecution. It
corroborated the attestations of other witnesses--many others. It had a
plausible ring to it. Two bills of sale radiated atmospheric legality.
If there had been dirty work, it must have originated with that renegade
half-breed, Yellow Wolf. And Yellow Wolf was dead. He had died while
serving a term in the penitentiary for cattle-rustling. Uncle Sam
himself had set the seal upon him--and now he was dead. This insinuated
charge he could not answer. The finality of it seemed to set its stamp
upon the people gathered there--upon the twelve good men and true, as
well as upon others. Yellow Wolf was dead. George Williston was dead.
Their secrets had died with them. An inscrutable fate had lowered the
veil. Who could pierce it? One might believe, but who could know? And
the law required knowledge.

"We will call Charlie Nightbird," said Small, complacently.

There was a little waiting silence--a breathless, palpitating silence.

"Is Charlie Nightbird present?" asked Small, casting rather anxious eyes
over the packed, intent faces. Charlie Nightbird was not present. At
least he made no sign of coming forward. The face of the young counsel
for the State was immobile during the brief time they waited for Charlie
Nightbird--whose dark, frozen face was at that moment turned toward the
cold, sparkling sky, and who would never come, not if they waited for
him till the last dread trump of the last dread day.

There was some mistake. Counsel had been misinformed. Nightbird was an
important witness. He had been reported present. Never mind. He was
probably unavoidably detained by the storm. They would call Jesse Big
Cloud and others to corroborate the defendant's statements--which they
did, and the story was sustained in all its parts, major and minor. Then
the defence rested.

Richard Gordon arose from his chair. His face was white. His lean jaws
were set. His eyes were steel. He was anything but a lover now, this man
Gordon. Yet the slim little court reporter with dark circles of
homesickness under her eyes had never loved him half so well as at this
moment. His voice was clear and deliberate.

"Your honor, I ask permission of the Court to call a witness in direct
testimony. I assure your honor that the State had used all efforts in
its power to obtain the presence of this witness before resting its
case, but had failed and believed at the time that he could not be
produced. The witness is now here and I consider his testimony of the
utmost importance in this case."

Counsel for the defendant objected strenuously, but the Court granted
the petition. He wanted to hear everything that might throw some light
on the dark places in the evidence.

"I call Mr. George Williston," said Gordon.

Had the strain crazed him? Louise covered her eyes with her hands. Men
sat as if dazed. And thus, the cynosure of all eyes--stupefied
eyes--Williston of the ravaged Lazy S, thin and worn but calm, natural
and scholarly-looking as of old--walked from the little ante-room at the
side into the light and knowledge of men once more and raised his hand
for the oath. Not until this was taken and he had sat quietly down in
the witness chair did the tension snap. Even then men found it difficult
to focus their attention on the enormous difference this new witness
must make in the case that a few moments before had seemed settled.

Mary sat with shining eyes in the front row of wooden chairs. It was no
wonder she had laughed and been so gay all the dreary yesterday and all
the worse to-day. Louise shot her a look of pure gladness.

Small's face was ludicrous in its drop-jawed astonishment. The little
lawyer's face was a study. A look of defiance had crept into the
defendant's countenance.

The preliminary questions were asked and answered.

"Mr. Williston, you may state where you were and what you saw on the
fourteenth day of July last."

Williston, the unfortunate gentleman and scholar, the vanquished cowman,
for a brief while the most important man in the cow country, perhaps,
was about to uncover to men's understanding the dark secret hitherto
obscured by a cloud of supposition and hearsay. He told the story of his
visit to the island, and he told it well. It was enough. Gordon asked no
further questions regarding that event.

"And now, Mr. Williston, you may tell what happened to you on the night
of the thirtieth of last August."

Williston began to tell the story of the night attack upon the Lazy S,
when the galvanic Small jumped to his feet. The little lawyer touched
him with a light hand.

"Your honor," he said, smoothly, "I object to that as incompetent,
irrelevant, and immaterial, and not binding on the defendant."

"Your honor," interrupted Gordon, with great calmness, "we intend to
show you before we get through that this testimony is competent, and
that it is binding upon the defendant."

"Was the defendant there?"

"The defendant was there."

The objection was overruled.

So Williston told briefly but to the point the story of the night attack
upon his home, of the defence by himself and his daughter, and of the
burning of his house and sheds. Then he proceeded:

"Suddenly, some one caught me from behind, my arms were pinioned to my
sides, something was clapped over my mouth. I was flung over a horse and
strapped to the saddle all in less time than it takes to tell it, and
was borne away in company with the man who had overpowered me."

He paused a moment in his recital. Faces strained with expectancy
devoured him--his every look and word and action. Mary was very pale,
carried thus back to the dread realities of that night in August, and
shuddered, remembering that ghastly galloping. Langford could scarce
restrain himself. He wanted to rip out a blood curdling Sioux war-whoop
on the spot.

"Who was this man, Mr. Williston?" asked Gordon.

"Jesse Black."

Small was on his feet again, gesticulating wildly. "I object! This is
all a fabrication, put in here to prejudice the minds of the jury
against this defendant. It is a pack of lies, and I move that it be
stricken from the record."

The little lawyer bowed his head to the storm and shrugged up his
shoulders. Perhaps he wished that he, or his associate--one of the unholy
alliance at least--was where the wicked cease from troubling, on the far
away islands of the deep seas, possibly, or home on the farm. But his
expression told nothing.

"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" expostulated Judge Dale. "Gentlemen! I insist.
This is all out of order." Only one gentleman was out of order, but that
was the Judge's way. Gordon had remained provokingly cool under the
tirade.

Again the soft touch. Small fell into his chair. He poured himself a
glass of water from the pitcher standing on the attorneys' table and
drank a little of it nervously.

"I move," said the little lawyer, "that all this touching upon the
personal matter of this witness and having to do with his private
quarrels be stricken out of the evidence as not bearing on the case in
question."

All in vain. The Judge ruled that it did bear on the case, and Williston
picked up the thread of his story.

"We rode and rode hard--it must have been hours; daylight was coming
before we stopped. Our horses were spent I had no idea where we were.
From the formation of the land, I judged we were not far from the river.
We were surrounded by bluffs. I can hardly make you see how clever