“And that's all you know of what became of him?”
“No, it ain't, young man. I know, we all know, he had four days' grub an' no gun to shoot meat with. If he didn't make the settlement on the Yukon he'd croaked long before this.”
“I suppose you've got all the guns in this part of the country accounted for, too,” Smoke observed pointedly.
Shunk Wilson was angry. “You'd think I was the prisoner the way you slam questions into me. Now then, come on with the next witness. Where's French Louis?”
While French Louis was shoving forward, Lucy opened the door.
“Where you goin'?” Shunk Wilson shouted.
“I reckon I don't have to stay,” she answered defiantly. “I ain't got no vote, an' besides, my cabin's so jammed up I can't breathe.”
In a few minutes her husband followed. The closing of the door was the first warning the judge received of it.
“Who was that?” he interrupted Pierre's narrative to ask.
“Bill Peabody,” somebody spoke up. “Said he wanted to ask his wife something and was coming right back.”