"You have had more experience in such matters, and understand better how to go at it than I do."
"Yes, I have only asked for the facts—that's all. I didn't try to get anybody to tell me a lie. I've found that a whole bunch of these niggers was out that you and your captain said was in. You-all are trying to cover up this matter, and it makes you just as sorry and guilty as these niggers, making you accessories to the crime."
In employing the word "sorry" here, Captain Bill meant "mean" and "paltry," but any one could see that the word applied equally well in its other uses.
"You are sorrier than these niggers," he went on, "because you, as their officers, and as men of the United States Army, ought to be first to hunt out the guilty ones, instead of trying to hide them. As for Macklin there I think he was out with the niggers, and when he didn't come home with them—he having got scared and hid out, I reckon—they thought he'd got caught and put in jail."[16]
Captain Bill turned to District Attorney Kleiber.
"I want to make a complaint," he said, "against these men here for being accessories to this murder by trying to cover it up. If this kind of thing is going on in the army, it's time the country found it out."
Neither Major Penrose nor Captain Macklin made any coherent defense to these charges, and Captain McDonald, with his sergeant, left the Post. The Rangers spent the rest of the day in completing the evidence against the thirteen suspects—one ex-soldier and twelve privates of Company B. It did not appear that members of the other two companies had taken part in the raid, though there was plenty of evidence to show that many of them had full knowledge of the affair and of the parties concerned. District Judge Welch issued the warrants, declaring the evidence amply sufficient, and heartily approving Captain McDonald's action throughout—District Attorney Kleiber assenting. They agreed that the statutes clearly gave the Ranger Captain the right to arrest and hold any offender against the State law, whether in federal or civil employ. The cases of Officers Penrose and Macklin, however, they decided to leave to military tribunals.
On the following morning, Thursday, August 23d, armed with the warrants, Captain McDonald and Sergeant McCauley again appeared at the entrance of Fort Brown. Evidently the garrison had recovered its poise a little over-night, and was again defiant, for once more a file of men with guns stood there to bar admission. Among this guard were Corporal Miller, Sergeant Jackson and most of the other suspects. As the Rangers approached, the U.S. rifles once more came to a level accompanied, as before by the peremptory word,