"Raised her yourself, did you?"
"Yes!" shouted Crittenden angrily.
"That's all!" said Angy briefly, and Isaac Crittenden sank back into his chair, dazed at the very unexpectedness of his escape. It was a perilous line of questioning that his former roustabout had taken up, leading close to the stealing of Upton's cattle and the seizing of Pecos Dalhart's herd, but at the very moment when he might have sprung the mine Angy had withheld his hand. The gaunt cowman tottered to his seat in a smother of perspiration, and Shepherd Kilkenny, after a moment's consideration, decided to make his hand good by calling a host of witnesses.
They came into court, one after the other, the hard-faced gun-men that Crittenden kept about his place, and with the unblinking assurance of men who gamble even with life itself they swore to the stereotyped facts, while Angy said never a word.
"The People rest!" announced the district attorney at last, and lay back smiling in his chair to see what his opponent would spring.
"Your Honor and gentlemen of the jury," began Angevine Thorne, speaking with the easy confidence of a barrister, "the prosecution has gone to great lengths to prove that Pecos Dalhart branded this calf. The defence freely admits that act, but denies all felonious intent. We will show you, gentlemen of the jury, that at the time he branded the animal it was by law and right his own, and that during his absence it had been feloniously and unlawfully branded into the Spectacle brand by the complaining witness, Isaac Crittenden. Mr. Dalhart, will you please take the stand!"
Awkward and shamefaced in the presence of the multitude and painfully conscious of his jail clothes, Pecos mounted to the stand and turned to face his inquisitor. They had rehearsed the scene before—for Babe Thorne was not altogether ignorant of a lawyer's wiles—and his examination went off as smoothly as Kilkenny's examination of Crit, down to the point where Pecos was rudely pounced upon and roped while he was branding his spotted calf. Then it was that Angevine Thorne's voice began to ring like a trumpet, and as he came to the crucial question the audience stood motionless to listen.
"Now, Mr. Dalhart," he clarioned, "you say that you purposely barred the Spectacle brand upon this calf and burned your own brand, which was a Monkey-wrench, below it? What was your reason for that act?"
"My reason was that the calf was mine!" cried Pecos, rising angrily to his feet. "When I first come to Verde Crossing I bought an old spotted cow and her calf from José Garcia and branded them with a Monkey-wrench on the ribs—I kept her around my camp for a milk cow. That first calf growed up and she was jest comin' in with another one when I went to New Mexico last Fall. Well, when I came back last Spring I hadn't got into town yet when I come across my old milk cow with her ears all chopped up and her brand burned over and this little calf, lookin' jest like her, with a Spectacle brand burned on his ribs. That made me mad and I was jest ventin' the calf back to a Monkey-wrench when Crittenden and his cowboys jumped in and roped me!"
"You say that you bought the mother of this calf from José Garcia?"