With anxiety keenly concealed, she tried to feel out Billy's opinion on what had happened.
“That shows what Bert's violent methods come to,” she said.
He shook his head slowly and gravely.
“They'll hang Chester Johnson, anyway,” he answered indirectly. “You know him. You told me you used to dance with him. He was caught red-handed, lyin' on the body of a scab he beat to death. Old Jelly Belly's got three bullet holes in him, but he ain't goin' to die, and he's got Chester's number. They'll hang'm on Jelly Belly's evidence. It was all in the papers. Jelly Belly shot him, too, a-hangin' by the neck on our pickets.”
Saxon shuddered. Jelly Belly must be the man with the bald spot and the tobacco-stained whiskers.
“Yes,” she said. “I saw it all. It seemed he must have hung there for hours.”
“It was all over, from first to last, in five minutes.”
“It seemed ages and ages.”
“I guess that's the way it seemed to Jelly Belly, stuck on the pickets,” Billy smiled grimly. “But he's a hard one to kill. He's been shot an' cut up a dozen different times. But they say now he'll be crippled for life—have to go around on crutches, or in a wheel-chair. That'll stop him from doin' any more dirty work for the railroad. He was one of their top gun-fighters—always up to his ears in the thick of any fightin' that was goin' on. He never was leery of anything on two feet, I'll say that much for'm.”
“Where does he live?” Saxon inquired.