“You might have known I’d be with you as soon as I could get away from the desk. I presume you will get your preliminary in the morning?”
“I suppose so; though I don’t know anything about it.”
“It’s safe to count on it, anyway,” Forsyth continued, “and there are two matters to be arranged in the meantime—counsel and bail. Give me a list of your friends, and I’ll go out and hustle for you.”
Brant laughed. “I haven’t reputable friends enough to furnish bail in a case of assault and battery. There are plenty of the other kind, but I don’t mean to call on them—or to let any one else.”
“Oh, pshaw! what difference can it make now? You can’t hope to preserve your incognito through all the publicity of a murder trial.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that; and it makes all the difference in the world to me,” said Brant doggedly. “I want none of their help, and I sha’n’t accept it—that’s all.”
“Well and good,” replied the editor cheerily. “In that event I shall have to see what I can do on my own account.”
“My dear Forsyth, you will do nothing of the kind. The case will come up at the next term of court, and I shall stay right where I am until the sheriff’s deputy comes for me.”
Forsyth did not press the point. The day of reckless shooting affrays had passed its Colorado meridian—in the cities, at least—and a healthy public sentiment was beginning to demand a more stringent interpretation of the law. Moreover, the Plainsman had kept well to the front in the law-and-order movement, and its editor had protested often and vehemently against the laxity of judges and juries in murder cases. For this cause he went not unwillingly from the question of bail to that of counsel.
“Have you made up your mind whom you will have to defend you?” he asked.