“To cotch him,” replied her visitor concisely.
“But what for?” asked Olive, looking at him with wide eyes of horror. She knew only too well what hunting down a man portended.
“Wal, there’s bin a shootin’ over to his house, an’ one o’ thim boys o’ Mills is shot, shot dead. Cotterell done it. And now he’s gone an’ run off. The boys they ’lowed Cotterell best be hung this time. Las’ time he was let off. He won’t be agin, you bet.”
“How do you know he has shot young Mills? What evidence have you of it?” asked Olive in terror, yet she could not help pressing the man to tell her, although each word was like a stab.
He gave a silent inward laugh as if his thoughts were facetious. “Evidence an’ enough,” he said. “Jake Mills’ body with a bullet through his heart. Yer can’t git nothin’ plainer in the way of evidence than that, I reckon.”
“But how do you know it was Mr. Cotterell shot him?” asked Olive.
“Damn my eyes! but yer mus’ be a nateral born fool, Mis’ Weston. Jake Mills were foun’ on Cotterell’s lan’. Who else could ha’ done it? Besides, he did, an’ that’s a fac’ anyhow.”
“I think it is perfectly monstrous,” burst out Olive, trembling with agitation. “I never heard of a wickeder thing. Here is this man you have decided to hang, and you don’t even know if he has done the thing you accuse him of. If that is what you call prairie law and justice I can only say I never heard of a more sinful and unjust law. Black savages couldn’t do worse.”
“Mos’ like the boys will let him hev a trial, ef he’s partic’lar sot on’t. That won’t si’nify nothin’,” said Mr. Owen, again surveying Olive through the narrow aperture of his half-closed eyes, and again applying himself to his habitual occupation with vigour. She looked at him with a face in which horror and disgust struggled for mastery.
“If this horrid murder is committed by your neighbours, Mr. Owen, I shall think that prairie men are a disgrace to civilization,” said Olive.