Otis found that he could laugh. “I wouldn’t worry about that, Sheriff. I tell you I don’t hold it against you that you arrested me. You were just doing your duty.”
Sterling Carr called at the jail in the afternoon to visit his son.
“It aint so bad that you shot the ranger, son,” said the old cattle man as he gripped Otis’ hand. “But I wish you’d tell me it aint true that you plugged him in the back.”
“But I tell you that I didn’t shoot him,” Otis protested. “I was fifteen miles away at Bernat’s cabin when it happened.”
“That’s all right to tell the jury,” the old man returned. “I’ll get you the best lawyer in Wyoming, and he’ll make ’em believe it. But I wish you’d tell it to me straight.”
Otis went through the story from the time he had left the Footstool ranch until his arrest. At its conclusion Sterling Carr shook his head sorrowfully.
“I’m sorry you feel that you can’t confide in your own father, Otis,” he said. “You ought to know I aint going to tell on you.”
“But I tell you it’s true—every word of it!”
“Son, as soon as we heard at the ranch about your arrest, I learned from the boys about the meeting last night. They told me how they’d drawn lots to choose the man to run the ranger out of the country. And they told me it had fallen to you, and you’d gotten hot under the collar and told ’em to go to blazes—that you wouldn’t do it.”