"Yes, Your Honor," answered Pecos, "but if it's all the same to you I'd rather not have a lawyer. I'd like to ask a favor, Judge, if you don't mind. The reason I don't want an attorney appointed is that I know very well none of these lawyers around here can stand up to the district attorney when it comes to a case of law"—here Kilkenny smiled grimly to himself and glanced at Mr. Baker of the Blade—"but at the same time, Judge, I do want some one to speak for me, and I'm goin' to ask you to appoint my friend Mr. Thorne, back there, as my counsellor."
"Mr. Thorne?" inquired the judge, and as Angy stepped forward, smirking and bowing, a slight smile broke up the fine legal lines on the judicial brows. At no time was Angy over-fastidious about his attire, and a night in jail, particularly in the jag-cell, is warranted to spoil the appearance of the finest suit of clothes that was ever made. Angy's clothes were old and worn; his shirt was greasy around the neck, and his overalls, hanging loosely about his hips, piled up in slovenly rolls above his shoe-tops; his hat, from much fanning of open fires, was grimed with ashes and whitened with splashes of sour dough, and his shiny bald head and red face told all too plainly the story of his past. In the titter that followed his announcement he stood silent, rolling his bloodshot eyes upon the audience, but as the grinning bailiff smote the table for order he turned with the dignity of an orator and addressed the judge.
"Your Honor," he said, beginning the set speech which he had prepared, "I am not unaware that this request on the part of the defendant is a little irregular, but if the court please I should like to state the reasons—"
"Just a moment!" cut in the district attorney brusquely. "Your Honor, I object to this man being appointed to the position of counsellor on the ground that he is not a duly-licensed attorney and therefore not competent to practise in this court."
"As I am tendering my services without hope of compensation," observed Angy suavely, "and also without submitting briefs or other legal papers, I hope that the court will overlook this trifling irregularity. The law referred to by the district attorney, as applied to this case, was intended solely to protect the defendant in his rights, the inference being that no one not a regularly practising attorney is competent to adequately represent the defendant against the learned district attorney"—Angy bowed to that gentleman—"but at the same time, Your Honor, I wish to say that in days gone by I have stood before the bar"—the bailiff struck his gavel to quiet the sudden laughter—"I have stood before the bar of justice, Your Honor, and I have stood there, sir, not as Angevine Thorne, the drunkard, but as a regular practitioner in that court. I submit, Your Honor, that I am fully qualified, both by past experience and present information, to represent Mr. Dalhart in this unfortunate case!"
A murmur of astonishment passed around the room at this revelation of his past; for while Angevine Thorne had been about Geronimo, drunk and sober, for over twenty years, he had never referred except in the vaguest terms to the life which he had left behind. It struck wonder into the breasts of the court-room bums, many of whom had shared the jag-cell with him in times past, and Mr. Baker of the Blade sank down into a seat and began to write hurriedly upon his pad; but Shepherd Kilkenny, with a sudden premonition of what Angy's "present information" might lead to, did not yield himself to any such puny emotion as surprise. He was a fighter, and a sure-thing fighter to boot.
"Your Honor!" he cried, "I wish to protest most—"
"Objection is overruled!" interposed the judge. "I see no reason why Mr. Thorne should not conduct this case if the defendant so wishes, and the clerk will enter him accordingly. Would Wednesday be too soon for you to prepare your argument, Mr. Thorne? Is it satisfactory to you, Mr. Kilkenny? Very well, then, I will set the case for Wednesday, the eighth of October, at ten A. M. Call the next case, Mr. Bailiff!"
The bailiff called it, still smiling, and in the pause half the occupants of the court-room boiled out onto the court-house lawn and gave vent to their pent-up emotions. Babe Thorne was going to buck Kilkenny and plead a case in court! He would make an impassioned appeal and raise Cain with Ike Crittenden's witnesses—it would be an event never to be forgotten! Still laughing they scattered through the town, and soon men came hurrying forth from the different saloons to verify the report; they gathered in a crowd by the sheriff's office and, as the word spread that it was true, gangs of cowboys and men on livery-stable plugs went dashing down the streets, whooping and laughing and crying the news to their friends. It was a new excitement—something doing—and the way an Arizona town will take on over some such trifling event is nothing short of scandalous. Within two hours the leisure male population of Geronimo was divided into two hostile camps—those who would get Babe drunk before the event and those who would keep him sober and have him take a fall out of Kilkenny. On the one side it was argued that, unless he was properly ginned up, Babe would not do justice to the occasion; but cooler heads won on the proposition that the judge would bar him if he got drunk and hollered, and a committee of prominent citizens was organized to protect him from himself.