"Yes, sir," responded Crittenden, "I come across Pecos Dalhart."
"Is this the gentleman to whom you refer?" inquired Kilkenny, pointing an accusing thumb toward Pecos. "Very good, then—you identify the defendant. Now, Mr. Crittenden, what was the defendant doing at that time?"
"He had a spotted calf of mine strung out by a little fire and was alterin' the brand with a runnin' iron." Old Crit's eye wandered instinctively to Pecos Dalhart as he spoke and gleamed with a hidden fire, but his face was as expressionless as a death mask.
"I offer the following animal in evidence," said the district attorney, beckoning toward the side door. "Bring in the exhibit!" And as Bill Todhunter appeared, sheepishly leading the spotted calf, which had been boarded all summer in town, he threw out his hand dramatically and hissed:
"Do you identify this animal? Is that the calf?"
"I do!" responded Crit. "It is the same animal!"
"That's all!" announced Kilkenny, and with a grin of triumph he summoned the hawk-eyed jurymen to inspect the brand. There it was, written on the spotted side of the calf, in ineffaceable lines—the plain record of Pecos Dalhart's crime, burned with his own hands. Across the older scar of Isaac Crittenden's brand there ran a fresh-burnt bar, and below the barred Spectacle was a Monkey-wrench, seared in the tender hide. To a health-seeker or a mining man the significance of those marks might be hidden, but the twelve cowmen on the jury read it like a book. Only one thing gave them a passing uneasiness—Crit's Spectacle brand was very evidently devised to burn over Pecos Dalhart's Monkey-wrench, but that was beside the point. They were there to decide whether Pecos Dalhart had stolen that particular spotted calf, and the markings said that he did. By that broad bar which ran through the pair of Spectacles he deprived Isaac Crittenden of its ownership, and by the Monkey-wrench burned below he took it for his own. All right then,—they retired to their seats and Angevine Thorne took the witness.
They faced each other for a minute—the man who had committed a crime and covered it, and the man who had sworn to expose his guilt—and began their fencing warily.
"Mr. Crittenden," purred Angy, "you are in the cattle business, are you not? Yes, indeed; and about how many cattle have you running on your range?"
"I don't know!" answered Crittenden gruffly.