Landover turned on his heel and walked away, and Percival, with a shrug of his shoulders, set about making preparations to safe-guard Sancho Mendez when he was brought in from the wood. He posted a number of reliable, cool-headed men around the “meetinghouse,” many of them being armed. Arrangements were made for barricading the door and the few windows. The prisoner was to be confined in the building, a long, low structure, and there he was to tell his story and stand trial. There was to be no delay in the matter of a trial.
“You will sit as judge, Mike,” said the “boss,” addressing Malone. “There will not be any legal technicalities, old man, and there won't be any appeal,—so all you've got to do is to act like a judge and not like a lawyer. We've got to do this thing in the regular way. Try to forget that you have practiced in the New York City courts. Remember that there is such a thing as justice and pay absolutely no attention to what you are in the habit of calling the law. The law is a beautiful thing if you don't take it too seriously. Ninety-nine out of every hundred judges in the courts of the U. S. A. sit through a trial worrying their heads off trying to remember the law so that they can keep out of the record things that might make them look like jackasses when the case is carried up to a higher court,—and while they are thinking so hard about the law they forget all about the poor little trifle called justice. I guess you know that as well as I do, so there's no use talking about it.”
“I guess I do,” said Michael Malone. “I live on technicalities when I'm in New York. If it were not for technicalities, I'd starve to death. And, my God, man, if we had to stop and think about justice every time we go into court, we'd be a disgrace to the profession.”
Percival, Peter Snipe, Flattner and several others strode out from the meeting-house and swept the long line of huts with serious, apprehensive eyes. They had expected to find the people congregated at some nearby point, ready to swoop down upon the prisoner the instant he appeared with his captors at the edge of the wood. To their amazement and relief, the people had taken Percival's command literally. They had retired to their huts, and but few of them were to be seen, even on their doorsteps.
“Can you beat it?” cried Snipe. “By golly, boys, they've put it squarely up to us. It's the greatest exhibition of restraint and confidence I've ever known. This couldn't have happened at home. Hello!”
The gaze of all was centred upon two persons who walked rapidly in the direction taken by Fitts and his party. No one spoke for a few seconds. Flattner, after a quick look at Percival's set, scowling face, was the first to speak. To a certain degree, he understood the situation. It was out of pure consideration for his friend's feelings that he said:
“I'll go and head 'em off, A. A.”
“Thanks, old chap,—but there's no sense in getting yourself disliked. I'll do it. I'm in bad already,—and besides I'm the one who gave the order.”
Near the end of the row of huts, he drew alongside of Ruth Clinton and Landover.
“The order was meant for every one, Miss Clinton,” he said levelly. “Am I to understand that you have decided to ignore it?”