CHAPTER XXXV
Sim Squires knew that when the brief farce of the trial took place he would be called forward to testify with a few prearranged lies. In his mouth was a pebble, put there to change his voice—but in his mutinous heart was an obsession of craving to see Bas Rowlett in such a debased position as that which Parish Thornton occupied—for, of all men, he feared and hated Bas most.
This unrelished participation in the mob spirit was more abhorrent than it had been before. The scorn of Dorothy's eyes had a scorpion sting that he could not escape—and this woman had given his life an atmosphere of friendliness and kindliness which it had not known before.
"Now," announced the masked spokesman, "we're well-nigh ready, an' thar hain't no virtue in bein' dilitary—albeit we don't aim ter hang him untried. Witness Number One, come forward."
Witness Number One was Sim Squires, and as though his tongue had been stricken with sudden dumbness and his limbs with paralysis, he hung back when he had been called. Slowly he looked at Parish Thornton, whose face was pale, but set once more to the calm of resoluteness—and at the ghost-terror and the lingering contempt in the deep and suffering eyes of the wife.
"Thar's a man hyar in this room," began Sim Squires, "thet's done been seekin' evidence erginst ther riders, an' he's done secured a lavish of hit, too." So far, his words were running in expected grooves, and as the voice went on a little indistinct because of the pebble under the tongue, his impatient audience accorded him only a perfunctory attention.
"He's done hed spies amongst ye an' he's got evidence thet no co'te kain't fail ter convict on," proceeded the witness, slowly. "He aims ter penitenshery you," his finger rose and settled, pointing toward the man who had acted as spokesman, and who was Rick Joyce. Then it rose again and fell on others, as Sim added, "an' you—an' you!"
"We don't aim ter give him no chanst," interrupted Joyce, and it was then that Sim Squires branched into unanticipated ways.
Suddenly this amazing witness ripped off his mask and threw aside his hat. Then he spat out the pebble that interfered with his enunciation and annoyed him, and like the epilepsy victim who slides abruptly from sane normality into his madness, the man became transformed. The timidities that had fettered him and held him a slave to cowardice were swept away like unconsidered drift on the tide of a passion that was willing to court death, if vengeance could come first. He had definitely crossed the line of allegiance and meant to swing the fatal fury of that mob from one victim to another, or die in his effort to that end. His eyes were the ember pupils of the madman or the martyr, his face was the frenzied face of a man to whom ordinary considerations no longer count; whose idea as fixed and single, and to whom personal consequences have become unimportant. His body was rigid yet vibrant, and his voice rang through the room as his finger rose and pointed into the face of Bas Rowlett.