“Well, I happened to know some of the crowd that was mixed up in the rumpus and had been followin’ the case. One night when the Big Boss was in the dinin’ camp havin’ supper I threw down the paper and started to cuss.’
“He looks over at me and asks: ‘Why all the sweet language, Macdougal?’
“I starts in and tells him all about the case and how I thought the world was all wrong that nobody would lift a finger to help out a poor, fallen woman like this one. He listened with a lot more interest than you can generally get out of him, and I wound up by sayin’, ‘Cripes, what’s all the preachers for that they don’t start in scorin’ the guilty parties instead of standin’ by while everybody pans the girl?’
“‘The preachers ain’t to blame, Sandy,’ he comes back. ‘Most of the preachers go as far as they dare in settin’ the world right, and every once in awhile you read about some of the darin’ ones being bumped out of their pulpits for speakin’ their minds.’ Then his face gets chalk-white like you see it when he’s mad. ‘It’s this system they call Society needs fixin’, Sandy,’ he sneers. ‘Society that just wants to use the law and the preachers to keep its chosen crowd out of jail in this world and out of hell in the next.’
“Think of him, the king of the big timber crooks, a-talkin’ this way. But that was just like him—always contrary to everybody else.
“‘Macdougal,’ says he suddenly, ‘don’t you wish you was a great lawyer?’
“‘Why?’ I asks.
“‘Because,’ says he, ‘you could defend this girl before the court and maybe cheat the thing they call the Law.’
“‘I never thought of that,’ I replied, but I could see there was something comin’.
“That little devil-grin flickers around the Big Boss’s poker face that’s always there when he’s plannin’ hellery. ‘We ain’t lawyers, Macdougal,’ he states, ‘but I know where the money can be found to hire the best sob-stirrin’ lawyer in Kam City, and if he gets her clear there’ll be a bonus of a couple of hundred in it for him.’