He knew that his father would move heaven and earth to bring about his acquittal. Yet, in face of the evidence against him, which seemed incontrovertible, he knew that even the finest legal talent in the State would be of little avail with an impartial jury.
And even so, such an acquittal would not mean vindication in the eyes of the rangeland. He would still be known as the man who had shot the unarmed ranger through the back. In the eyes of Mariel, for instance—
He wished that he had found courage to ask his father if she had expressed an opinion as to his guilt.
CHAPTER VIII
It was night. Far away, Otis could hear the mournful wail of a coyote. By this time the folks at the Footstool ranch must have extinguished the big oil lamp, and have retired. The bunkhouse would be dark. He imagined he could hear the occasional sound of hoofs from the corral, with now and then a nicker or a squeal—the same sounds he had heard a thousand times before. He wondered if it would ever be his fortune to hear them again.
Presently he became conscious of a vague murmur from without the jail, which resolved itself into the sound of scores of pattering hoofs, thudding in the deep dust of the street.
“Some of the boys come in to paint the town,” he thought. And then he remembered that pay-day was two weeks distant, and that “the boys” seldom had occasion to come to town in force at any other time.
He rose leisurely from his bunk, and stepped to the bars of his cell-room, which were some three feet from the barred window. He peered out into the darkness, but could see nothing but some vague and shadowy forms milling about in the gloom.
Suddenly he started at a crashing knock upon the outer door of the little jail. He had heard the knock of a revolver-butt before, and believed he recognized the sound. Three times the knock echoed through the barren interior of the darkened jail. Silence, and then three more knocks, more violent than ever.
Then, in the quavering voice of the old jailer: