"I was late," explained Jack, "but I told you I rode around to the station to get a wedding-present I ordered for my wife—"
Jim interrupted him to substantiate the statement. Pointing to a chair, he said: "That's so. There it is, too—that there chair."
The Sweetwater outfit nodded in acquiescence, but the others looked incredulous.
Buck sneered at the defense which Jack made. "Nobody saw you over that way, did they?"
"I saw Terrill. It must have been just before he was killed. I didn't meet anybody else." Jack showed no trace of temper under the inquisition.
"Of course you saw him before he was killed—about a minute. Mebbe you didn't plug him the next minute with a .44."
The charge roused Sage-brush's fighting blood. Drawing his gun, he attempted to get a fair shot at the accuser. Fresno and Show Low grabbed him by the arms, holding him back. The foreman shouted: "There'll be some one plugged right now if you-all make another break like that."
Slim waved his hands over his head, driving the men backward, as if he were shooing away a flock of chickens.
"Easy now—easy," he drawled. "There ain't a-goin' to be nothin' doin' here, 'cept law an' justice."
Buck laughed sneeringly at the wavering of his men. He would have to do something to put more heart into them and regain the ground he had lost by his single-handed conduct of the case.