“No one,” said Brant.
“Nonsense! And why not, pray?”
“I shall plead my own cause.”
“Be your own lawyer and have a fool for a client, I suppose. But that won’t do at all. I know you have been living in an atmosphere where, as we say, ‘everything goes,’ but you mustn’t bank on mining camp methods in Denver at this late day. The prosecution here won’t leave you a leg to stand on; it can’t, under the present pressure of public sentiment.”
“Nevertheless, I shall plead my own cause,” Brant insisted stubbornly.
“You are not going to be allowed to hang yourself after that fashion. I shall retain the best lawyer I can find, and send him to you early in the morning.”
“If you do I shall send him away again.”
The editor got up to tramp back and forth in the narrow limits of the cell. “What the devil is the matter with you, anyway?” he demanded. “Can’t you see that you are sending yourself straight to the gallows? I tell you, Brant, you don’t realize the change that has been wrought here even in the last few months. The jury that acquitted Steve Basket last spring did what no jury will ever do again in Denver. And if Jarvis tells a straight story, you haven’t a ghost of a show without the best legal help you can get.”
“What you say is all true enough, and I realize it as clearly as you do,” was the calm reply. “But you are talking quite beside the mark. I am here, charged with the murder of James Harding, and I am ready and willing to take what shall befall. I don’t need a lawyer to help me do that, do I?”
Having no doubt of Brant’s guilt, Forsyth made haste to interrupt what he feared might lead to an incriminating confession. “Don’t tell me anything about it,” he broke in quickly. “We are known to be intimate, and it is quite as likely as not I shall be called as a witness against you.”