After a moment’s pause the witness volunteered in amplification: “Where I come from we don’t have many clocks or watches. We goes by the sun and moon.”
“Then you can swear that if Private Grant fired the shot that killed Captain Comyn, he must have escaped and eluded your sight; armed himself, crossed the plaza; turned the corner; accomplished the act and gotten clean away, all within the brief period of five minutes?”
“I can swear to more than that. He didn’t get past me till after the pistol went off. There wasn’t no way out but by the one door, and I was right at that door all the time until I left it.”
“When did you leave?”
The witness gave response without hesitation, yet with the same serious weighing of his words.
“I was standing there, sorter peerin’ up at the stars an’ beginning to feel right smart tired when I heard the shot. I heard the shout of the corporal of the guard, too, an’ then it was that I made my mistake.” He paused and went on evenly. “I hadn’t ought to have stirred away from my post, but it seemed like a sort of a general alarm, an’ I went runnin’ to’rds it. 19 That was the first chanst Bud had to get away. When I got back he was gone.”
“You are sure he was still there when the shot sounded?”
“As God looks down, I can swear he was!”
Then the defense took the witness.
“When does your enlistment expire?”