When the committee returned to Whooping Hollow, and had submitted their report, threats were freely and openly made by the exasperated miners that they would take Podgett out of the improvised jail and hang him at once. But better counsel prevailed, and it was finally agreed upon at an open-air meeting held that afternoon that he should have a fair trial, as had always been customary in dealing with criminals since the establishment of the camp. The prisoner would be allowed to select a jury of twelve men himself—but it must be composed of the most reputable citizens only; a judge should be elected by the crowd, he to appoint some one competent to prosecute, and another to defend.
As soon as the preliminaries were agreed to by the now excited mob, George Burton's general outfitting store was selected for the court-room, and the trial set for eight o'clock the same evening. In that community no such thing as the law's delay was brooked; the citizens of Whooping Hollow believing in swift, stern justice on all occasions.
Long before the hour appointed for the trial the crowd began to collect, and by half-past seven the little room selected was packed to its utmost capacity. On the outside of the building, compelled to remain in the street, was an indignant, determined mob, numbering more than three times as many as were inside, surging backward and forward, making night hideous with their yells, blasphemous remarks of impatience, and muttered threats of "getting even with him," "having his heart's blood," etc. Both outside and inside of that rough log building was gathered as motley and as hard-looking a crowd as ever got together in the mountains anywhere. It was a strange admixture of ignorance, manhood, vice, virtue, and villainy. Some of the truest men that ever lived stood there; and some were there, too, as deeply dyed in crime, if the truth were known about them, as Podgett himself. Miners, merchants, gamblers and Mexicans were mixed up promiscuously; but their determined faces and show of revolvers spoke more eloquently than language, that "there wasn't going to be any fooling in the matter."
The dingy-looking room improvised for the purpose of the court was lighted by half a dozen tallow candles, which shed a dim, sallow haziness over the piles of bacon, picks, shovels, canned fruits, and other miners' goods stored there, and upon the hard-visaged men who had assembled there to mete out that justice which they believed had been already too long delayed. The red flames of a blazing fire, made of dry pine-knots, nearly as combustible as powder, occasionally shot up the throat of the huge chimney built diagonally across one corner of the room, whenever a fresh armful was thrown on by the two boys appointed to that office for the time being. When the flames had exhausted themselves, and only the embers glowed on the black hearth, a glimmering and a confused mist seemed to diffuse itself over the brindled crowd, while the fitful rays of the unsnuffed candles threw weird shadows on the whitewashed walls like ghosts, as if the spirits of the murderer's victims had come to be phantom witnesses of his agony and despair.
Old Sam Bartlett, as usual, was chosen judge without a dissenting voice. A pile of bacon, packed in gunny-sacks and elevated four or five feet above the floor, on which Bartlett, with his legs dangling over the side, sat, constituted the official bench. The jury, composed of the best men in town, sat on the right of the judge, on boxes, nail-kegs, sacks, or anything that came handy. Ike Podgett, the miserable man for whom all this strange proceeding was instituted, crouching on the dirt-begrimed floor between his two determined guards, rivets his eyes on the resolute men before him, distracted alternately by hope and despair; for he now feels the enormity of his guilt, and knows in his cowardly heart that he deserves death right there, without the least show of mercy.
Tom Bradford was appointed to prosecute the case, and a young man—Enoch Green, who had been graduated from the law school of Yale two or three years before—was appointed to defend Podgett. In a few pithy sentences Judge Bartlett explained the object of the gathering, and reviewed the terrible crimes that had been traced to the accused's den in the lonely cañon. He pointed to the ghastly remains and charred fragments of human skeletons piled upon a rude table in front of the jury, which he told them, in wonderfully impressive language, had been dug up, in his own presence, inside of Podgett's cabin and found among the rocks in the vicinity of the accursed place. The indignant old man grew almost eloquent in his recitation of the prisoner's damnable deeds, and a deathlike stillness pervaded the crowd as the words fell hot and earnestly from his lips, only broken now and then by the convulsive click of a revolver as the excited feelings of some pugnacious individual intensified under the judge's burning remarks. But for his admonition of their promise to give the miserable wretch Podgett a trial, in all probability the proceedings would have been ended before Bartlett closed his remarks.
Tom Bradford, in his argument as the legally constituted prosecutor, merely reiterated in a measure what the judge had so forcibly expressed, but he scathed Podgett in a fearful manner, working up a more exasperated feeling, if that were possible, than existed before; and when he had finished his address he called his witnesses.
The Doctor was first to testify; but he confined his evidence to the character of the charred bones, settling beyond the question of possibility that they were human.
Willow Gulch Jack then appeared, and upon him all eyes were concentrated as he related to the jury the simple story. He described accurately, with a dead coal taken from the fireplace, on the top of a cracker-box, the location of the cabin, its surroundings, and the position in which the several bodies were found, particularly that of Jemuel Knaggs, a piece of whose blue shirt and curious collar-button he exhibited, the latter being recognized by nearly every man present. He made a graphic if not artistic sketch with his rude pencil, and its effect upon the jury and spectators was manifested by expressions addressed to Podgett more emphatic than elegant.