George looked at him coldly. “Oh, nothing much. I just bit a baby’s arm off.”
The trusty went away. Something told him to ask no more questions.
Idaho officers came the next day and we went back with them to Pocatello, not caring to waste our money fighting extradition, and feeling confident there was nothing more than a suspicion of guilt against us. We were taken straight from the train at Pocatello to an undertaker’s. Every town official was there. Inside, in the back room, they led George up to a table where his victim was laid out under a white cloth. He knew what was coming, and so did I. The cloth was jerked off the body and one of the officers pointed his finger at George.
“There’s the poor devil you shot, you damned, murdering ———, and we’ll hang you for it.”
George coolly and calmly placed his right hand on the dead man’s brow for an instant. Then, taking it away, he held his arm out full length with the palm of his hand up, and said to the officer:
“If I killed that man, there’s the hand that held the gun, and there’s the finger that pulled the trigger” (jerking his index finger back and forth), and, pulling up his coat sleeve, “there’s my pulse! Do you want to feel it?”
They weakened. The old yegg had beaten them at their own game.
“Lock them up!” ordered somebody in authority. The marshal and a crowd of citizens took us to the calaboose, a small, one-room shack in the middle of a big lot. They waited around till a pair of villainous-looking Bannock Indians appeared with rifles. They were hired to watch us and took turn about, sitting on a box outside by the door, day and night, silent, motionless. At evening the marshal brought a basket of food from a near-by restaurant, and a bundle of clean, new blankets.
Pocatello boasted of two lawyers, brothers. One prosecuted cases in the magistrate’s court, and the other defended anybody foolish enough to hire him. Salt Chunk Mary sent the defender over to see us the next day. He hadn’t influence enough to have us brought to his office, so he talked to us through the calaboose-door wicket. We were not going to waste any money on him. We decided to wait and see if we needed a lawyer first. George thanked him for coming, told him we had done nothing, and didn’t need an attorney.
Every day for a week we were taken out and questioned. At the end of that time, having exhausted their stock of questions and patience, the marshal and his deputy had us into the justice’s court charged with vagrancy. In ten minutes we were tried, convicted, and sentenced to six months each in the county jail at Blackfoot.