“There’s the murder too,” objected one, “not as I put it fust noways, on’y we might go inter it now, seein’ there hain’t nuthin’ ter be got outer the hoss-stealin’ business.”
“Yer hain’t got evidence for the murder case too, has yer?” sneered the man who had been so peremptorily silenced by the foreman on his first objection to Olive’s presence.
“Only this. You are not non-resistants, are you?”
“We hain’t such blasted fools,” observed the Arkansas man genially.
“Well, then, when this poor Jake Mills in his drunken fury came up and fired at Mr. Cotterell, was he or was he not to fire in self-defence, according to your ideas and practice?”
“Of course he was,” said the jury in unison.
“Then that is what he did. Jake Mills fired first.”
“Two shots,” said Cotterell in a low voice, but every man in the room heard him distinctly.
“That coloured man we saw yesterday swore that Cotterell lay in wait for Mills, and fired from under cover as he came up to the house,” said a man from Illinois who had not spoken hitherto.
“Wal now,” said the Arkansas man, “I didn’t say nuthin’ ’bout that yesterday. Long as it was hoss-stealin’ we knowed whar we was an’ what we hed ter do, ’cause we hed the hoss. But this hyar shootin’ business hain’t noways the same. Any gen’leman hyar might hev a difference with any other gen’leman, an’ ’s long as it were done fair, I don’t see as how anyone hes any business to say they shouldn’t settle it with pistols or bowie-knives accordin’ to taste. We are all for freedom in this country I reckon, an’ that’s how it hes been done in Arkansas often an’ satisfact’ry.”