"Gentlemen, as this evidence will have to be handed in to the district attorney for what action he deems best, I wish to ask one more question. Mr. Sheriff, you know this Valley and the people in it well?"
"I do, known it for twenty years."
"Do you know of any reason why this woman Calamity would have shot or wished to shoot, her employer, MacDonald?"
The Sheriff changed a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other.
Eleanor leaned forward looking straight in his eyes. Bat was eyeing Eleanor quizzically. (Had he constructed the evidence so skilfully that he had come to believe it himself?) Matthews was almost tearing the arms out of the chair where he sat.
"Well," said Sheriff Flood clasping his hands in rest across his portly person. "I guess squaw is same as any other woman in one respect. I guess she had same reason for shootin' MacDonal' as any other woman in her place would o' had," and he looked up well pleased with himself at the roomful. For a moment, there was deadly heavy silence; then the hum of the crowd on the steps pouring the word out to those in the street.
"Ye lyin' scut[1]! Ye filthy cess pool o' dirt an' falsehood!"
The old frontiersman had sprung from his place and smashed his chair in twenty atoms on the table between the sheriff and the coroner.
"Y'll not offend the deceased gentleman's memory? Y'll not offend his daughter here? An' the dead can't defend themselves? An' y're all s' verra delicate y're lettin' a stinkin' slanderous unclean unspoken damnable hell-spawned lie go forth unchallenged t' blacken a dead man's memory? Oh, A know y'r kind well! A've heard harlots lisp an' whisp' an' half tell and damn by a lie o' th' eye! Y' are insinuatin' this woman Calamity shot her master to avenge dishonor in her early life? 'Tis a lie! 'Tis a most damnable black an' filthy lie! She wud a' died for MacDonald ten thousand times over if she could, because he had long ago, before ever he came here, avenged her dishonor."
The coroner had sprung back from the table. The mighty man of valor, who defended law, had precipitately put the space of overturned benches between himself and the irate old frontiersman. Matthews suddenly swung to face the spectators.