CHAPTER XIV
Lowell consulted with Judge Garford and Sheriff Tom Redmond, and it was decided to keep Jim McFann in jail at the agency until time for his trial for complicity in the first murder on the Dollar Sign road.
Sheriff Redmond admitted that, owing to the uncertainty of public sentiment, he could not guarantee the half-breed's safety if McFann were lodged in the county jail. Consequently the slayer of Bill Talpers remained in jail at the agency, under a strong guard of Indian police, supplemented by trustworthy deputies sent over by Redmond.
The killing of Talpers was the excuse for another series of attacks on Lowell by the White Lodge paper. Said the editor:
The murder of our esteemed neighbor, William Talpers, by James McFann, a half-breed, is another evidence of the necessity of opening the reservation to white settlement.
This second murder on the Dollar Sign road is not a mystery. Its perpetrator was seen at this bloody work. Furthermore, he is understood to have coolly confessed his crime. But, like the first murder, which is still shrouded in mystery, this was a crime which found its inception on the Indian reservation. Are white residents adjacent to the reservation to have their lives snuffed out at the pleasure of Government wards and reservation offscourings in general? Has not the time come when the broad acres of the Indian reservation, which the redskins are doing little with, should be thrown open to the plough of the white man?
"'Plough of the white man' is good," cynically observed Ed Rogers, after calling Lowell's attention to the article. "If those cattlemen ever get the reservation opened, they'll keep the nesters out for the next forty years, if they have to kill a homesteader for every hundred and sixty acres. So far as Bill Talpers's killing is concerned, I can't see but what it is looked upon as a good thing for the peace of the community."
It seemed to be a fact that Jim McFann's act had appealed irresistibly to a large element. Youthful cowpunchers rode for miles and waited about the agency for a glimpse of the gun-fighter who had slain the redoubtable Bill Talpers in such a manner. None of them could get near the jail, but they stood in picturesque groups about the agency, listening to the talk of Andy Wolters and others who had been on more or less intimate terms with the principals in the affair.
"And there was me a-snoozin' in that breed's camp the very day before he done this shootin'," said Andy to an appreciative circle. "He must have had this thing stewin' in his head at the time. It's a wonder he didn't throw down on me, jest for a little target practice. But I guess he figgered he didn't need no practice to get Bill Talpers, and judgin' from the way things worked out, his figgerin' was right. Some artist with the little smoke machine, that boy, 'cause Bill Talpers wasn't no slouch at shootin'! I remember seein' Bill shoot the head off a rattlesnake at the side of the road, jest casual-like, and when it come to producin' the hardware he was some quick for a big man. He more than met his match this time, old Bill did. And, by gosh! you can bet that nobody after this ever sends me out to any dry camps in the brush to take supplies to any gunman who may be hid out there. Next time I might snooze and never wake up."
All was not adulation for Jim McFann. Because of the Indian strain in his blood a minor undercurrent of prejudice had set in against him, more particularly among the white settlers and the cattlemen who were casting covetous eyes on reservation lands. While McFann was not strictly a ward of the Government, he had land on the reservation. His lot was cast with the Indians, chiefly because he found few white men who would associate with him on account of his Indian blood. Talpers was not loved, but the killing of any white man by some one of Indian ancestry was something to fan resentment without regard to facts. Bets were made that McFann would not live to be tried on the second homicide charge against him, many holding the opinion that he would be hanged, with Fire Bear, for the first murder. Also wagers were freely made that Fire Bear would not be produced in court by the Indian agent, and that it would be necessary to send a force of officers to get the accused Indian.