"He's married, though, hain't he, to a Spanish woman?—on'y a child, 'pears ter me; I've seed her oncet or twicet."
"He's got a woman out there with him—don't know whether she's his wife or mistress. We folks here don't bother our heads about such matters; it's none of our business; she's Mexican, though," answered Bradford. "But why," continued he, impatient and disgusted with the interview's length, "why do you ask these ridiculous questions? I have no time to waste!" He then petulantly rose, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, evidently tired, and determined to end the matter right there and get rid of his annoying visitor.
"'Cause, Tom Bradford," slowly and solemnly replied Jack, at the same time getting up from his chair, too; and putting his mouth close to Bradford's ear, he hoarsely whispered:
"'Cause Ike Podgett is the murderer of Jemuel Knaggs, anyhow, an' w'y not o' all the t'others ez is missin'?"
"My God, man! what do you mean?" excitedly asked Tom Bradford, suddenly wheeling around and placing both of his hands on Jack's shoulders.
"Tom Bradford, I mean 'zac'ly w'at I kin prove; an' ter tell this hyar is w'at hez brung me ter this hyar cabin."
"Hold on!" cried Bradford, violently agitated; "you must prove it, must tell all you know; but in the presence of others. Wait—sit down here—I'll be back directly, and bring some one with me. Wait!" and Bradford rushed out into the street in a terrible state of excitement.
He returned in less than twenty minutes in company with a short, thick-set, grizzly veteran miner, a man about sixty years of age. This was old man Bartlett—better known, however, and generally accosted as "Judge," because he had so frequently presided over the locally instituted courts in the diggings everywhere he had been during his long career in the mountains and on the Plains. He was regarded by everybody as the most level-headed, honest and discreet man in the whole Range. In fact, that had been his reputation wherever he had traveled, following him in all his erratic wanderings since his advent in the Far West, forty years before he turned up in Whooping Hollow. He had "whacked bulls" on the old Santa Fé trail; had lived for months on hardtack and bacon in the mountains of California; had nearly starved to death on the sage-bush plains of Nevada; had been captured by Apaches in Arizona, but was rescued by a detachment of United States dragoons just in time to escape the torture of the stake, the fires for which were already lighted; and years before all these strange experiences, had "filibustered" with Walker in Nicaragua. Altogether, he had seen as eventful a life as ever fell to the fortune of one man.
When the two men entered the little barren log room where Jack was, they found him sitting at its only window, his number twelve feet on the broad sill, pulling vigorously at the clay pipe that Bradford in his rough hospitality had originally provided him with, blowing great rings of smoke out of his huge mouth as he sat there as imperturbable as a rock. He greeted Bartlett with a short "Howdy, Jedge," and then resumed his pipe, waiting for him or Bradford to open the conversation.