“Ah.... I knowed I was right,” said the woman, with curious complacency. “Well, I didn’t ... break it ... did I? I only hit ’im light like.... He broke it hisself, didn’t ... he?”
And those were the last words she spoke.
“Did you get it all down?” asked Mrs. Dan, eagerly, when she came again to the next room.
“We got it all,” said the sergeant. “You might read this through and sign it, if you think it’s same as you heard.”
Mrs. Dan read it, and signed her name beneath the sergeant’s and her husband’s, and bundled him out forthwith to send a telegram away to headquarters.
“And tell everybody you meet,” she commanded. “God forgive me, if it’s a sin to feel glad, with the poor creatur lying there in the next room, but if it is I can’t help it. When can we get word to—to Thunder Ridge, Dan? I want them to know first minute they can. They was all so sure it wasn’t Steve Knight. And who was right about that same—me or you?” she finished triumphantly.
“You were right,” said Dan, soberly, “an’ it’s meself was never so glad to own it.”
“I’ll have to ride out to the Ridge and call the men in,” said the sergeant. “It’s been an out-an-out wild-goose chase, hasn’t it? Wonder what that thick-headed fool wanted to bolt for, and make all this fuss.”
“An’ wasn’t it a wise man he was to bolt?” said Mrs. Dan, defiantly, “when my own husband, that knows him well, went firing off his pistol at him, an’ believed up to the minute the poor woman spoke that it was Steve that did it. I’m a policeman’s wife myself, an’ well I know the police would have held him guilty an’ helped to hang him if you’d caught him, an’ the woman hadn’t had the strength an’ the wits to speak the truth with the last breath out of her lips.”
“Well, well,” admitted the sergeant, “it looked black enough, I’ll admit, an’ I suppose some men have swung for less evidence.”