BLANCO [with intense expression] A rotten foreman! Oh, what a rotten foreman!
THE SHERIFF. Shut up, will you. Providence shows us a way out here. Two women saw Blanco with a horse. One has a delicacy about saying so. The other will excuse me saying that delicacy is not her strongest holt. She can give the necessary witness. Feemy Evans: you’ve taken the oath. You saw the man that took the horse.
FEEMY. I did. And he was a low-down rotten drunken lying hound that would go further to hurt a woman any day than to help her. And if he ever did a good action it was because he was too drunk to know what he was doing. So it’s no harm to hang him. She said he cursed her and went away blaspheming and singing things that were not fit for the child to hear.
BLANCO [troubled] I didn’t mean them for the child to hear, you venomous devil.
THE SHERIFF. All thats got nothing to do with us. The question you have to answer is, was that man Blanco Posnet?
THE WOMAN. No. I say no. I swear it. Sheriff: don’t hang that man: oh don’t. You may hang me instead if you like: Ive nothing to live for now. You darent take her word against mine. She never had a child: I can see it in her face.
FEEMY [stung to the quick] I can hang him in spite of you, anyhow. Much good your child is to you now, lying there on Pug Jackson’s bench!
BLANCO [rushing at her with a shriek] I’ll twist your heart out of you for that. [They seize him before he can reach her].
FEEMY [mocking at him as he struggles to get at her] Ha, ha, Blanco Posnet. You cant touch me; and I can hang you. Ha, ha! Oh, I’ll do for you. I’ll twist your heart and I’ll twist your neck. [He is dragged back to the bar and leans on it, gasping and exhausted.] Give me the oath again, Elder. I’ll settle him. And do you [to the woman] take your sickly face away from in front of me.
STRAPPER. Just turn your back on her there, will you?