THE FOREMAN. Besides, you neednt hang him, you know. Theres plenty of willing hands to take that job off your conscience. So rip ahead, old son.
STRAPPER. Youre accountable to me for the horse until you clear yourself, Elder: remember that.
BLANCO. Out with it, you fool.
ELDER DANIELS. You might own up, Blanco, as far as my evidence goes. Everybody knows I borrowed one of the Sheriff’s horses from Strapper because my own’s gone lame. Everybody knows you arrived in the town yesterday and put up in my house. Everybody knows that in the morning the horse was gone and you were gone.
BLANCO [in a forensic manner] Sheriff: the Elder, though known to you and to all here as no brother of mine and the rottenest liar in this town, is speaking the truth for the first time in his life as far as what he says about me is concerned. As to the horse, I say nothing; except that it was the rottenest horse you ever tried to sell.
THE SHERIFF. How do you know it was a rotten horse if you didn’t steal it?
BLANCO. I don’t know of my own knowledge. I only argue that if the horse had been worth its keep, you wouldn’t have lent it to Strapper, and Strapper wouldn’t have lent it to this eloquent and venerable ram. [Suppressed laughter]. And now I ask him this. [To the Elder] Did we or did we not have a quarrel last evening about a certain article that was left by my mother, and that I considered I had a right to more than you? And did you say one word to me about the horse not belonging to you?
ELDER DANIELS. Why should I? We never said a word about the horse at all. How was I to know what it was in your mind to do?
BLANCO. Bear witness all that I had a right to take a horse from him without stealing to make up for what he denied me. I am no thief. But you havnt proved yet that I took the horse. Strapper Kemp: had I the horse when you took me, or had I not?
STRAPPER. No, nor you hadnt a railway train neither. But Feemy Evans saw you pass on the horse at four o’clock twenty-five miles from the spot where I took you at seven on the road to Pony Harbor. Did you walk twenty-five miles in three hours? That so, Feemy, eh?