CHAPTER XVIII.
LYNCH-LAW.
Union Mills was full of people, mostly men, and Phillipps’ Store, which was the only shop in the place, as well as being the Post-Office, was crowded to suffocation. Those who couldn’t get inside stood around the door talking loudly as they chewed their tobacco. Inside the talking and tobacco-chewing were carried on likewise. A ring of men were sitting on barrels and nail-kegs and coils of rope and extemporized chairs of all kinds. Of these, twelve arranged together at one side formed the jury, and the rest were witnesses and spectators. In their midst stood Cotterell. He was not bound or specially guarded in any way, but he was unarmed, while pistols hung at the belts of all the other men there. Cotterell held his head erect, his eyes looked clear, and his lips were firm. A careful observer might have noticed that his nostrils sometimes twitched, but his hands were perfectly steady. Yet he was on trial for his life, without appeal and without a friend in “the court.” Several of the men had asked him questions which he had answered, shortly and sharply perhaps, but with a perfectly steady voice.
“I dunno what we’re gwine on talkin’ for,” said a jury man with a twang that bespoke Arkansas. “Hain’t it clar this hyar feller, what was wanted for the shootin’ o’ Ole Mills’ boy, he’s the same cuss as stole the mare from them damned fools up to ’Fection City? He’s got ter be hanged, anyhow. I want ter go home. I hain’t a-gwine to stick hyar all day, by Gosh!”
“I did not steal the mare,” said Cotterell, his nostrils dilating.
“You hear that,” said the foreman, who sat on a sugar-barrel.
“You was ridin’ her when we come up t’yer,” said one who had been out on the hunt.
“I was.”
“How’d yer git her then ’cept by stealin’?”
“She was lent to me by one of the members of the Community,” said Cotterell.
“They’s damn fools, I know, but I reckon they hain’t such all-fired damn fools as ter give their best hoss ter you,” said the man from Arkansas.