Both denied the charge that they were allies, forgers, horse thieves, vendors of whisky to the Indians, and that they detained the women, except to preserve them from the savages. But at the appearance of the Carcajieu in the witness stand Kidd trembled and turned pale, muttering, "I am a lost man!"
"Starr, detective," muttered Dave Steelder, only less disconcerted. "Just so. John E. Starr, Chief of the U.S. Detective Police of Louisiana," said the ex-Carcajieu, forcibly. "I have been hanging close on you a long while, marking down everything you said and did. If you will allow me, Judge, I'll valet for these rogues."
Without giving time for anybody's opposition, he sprang upon the two stupefied prisoners, tore off the false hair that muffled their features, and rubbed their faces with his handkerchief, dipped in some antigrease liquid. The "cleaning up process," as a miner would say, resulted in a transformation even more remarkable than that of the Government official from the bandit's lieutenant.
The judges immediately pronounced the pair worthy of death; only they decreed that Kidd, or Hank Brown, or Mathias Corvino, should be the Indians' prize for torture, and Steelder, or Don Miguel Tadeo, simply hanged. At this, whilst Don Miguel smiled feebly, the rage of his accomplice burst forth:
"Give me over to those red fiends!" he roared. "You must think me the bigger villain, and I am not. I'll leave it to Bill Williams here. Is any man so base as he who tracked a harmless old man up in the Lonely Passes, and assassinated him, not for any grudge, but to possess the secret lure by which beavers are decoyed into traps. Yes, gentlemen, Don Miguel Tadeo, over thirty years ago, was plain 'Spanish Mike,' the hanger-on at the Kansas trading forts. It was he who stole, upon old Bill Williams and murdered him. Look in the deerskin shirt he wears, and in the crescent piece at the armpit, which is double, you will find the very recipe for mixing the beaver medicine, taken from the old trapper's warm body. Now, am I to be torn to pieces for an Injin holiday, and this cowardly slayer to be let off with a clean, easy, smoothly greased rope? Come, Judge Lynch, fair play!"
All eyes turned towards Bill Williams, whose features were strongly convulsed. By that moment of inattention the wretched Don Miguel endeavoured to profit. He burst away from the guards, and bounded thence in the only direction open. Alas, it led to the brink of the abyss, for the tribunal was held at the Medicine Rock.
With a savage yell, the trapper's son leaped after him. The Californian halted on the giddy verge. During that wavering the avenger reached him, stabbed him, removed his scalp, lashed him in the face with it, so that the blood blinded him, and, at the dagger point, goaded him on, on!
"Without pity for that old man, expect none now!" hissed the chief. "Over! And be the sandworm's pickings!"
The unfortunate man walked into the air, and fell with a prolonged scream.
Bill sat down on a projecting crag, muffled, his face in his blanket, and seemed to sob convulsively. The white men regarded the mute figure with awe and surprise. Taking advantage of this emotion, a dozen Blackfeet rushed upon Corvino at a sign from Red Knife, and overpowering him, despite a fierce resistance, bore him away to an unspeakable fate.