“Mary! How pale you are!” cried Louise, in alarm.
“I’m haunted by that man,” she continued, biting her lip to keep from crying out against the terrors of this country. “He’s always showing up in unexpected places. I shall die if I ever meet him alone.”
“You need not be afraid,” said Gordon, speaking quietly from his place at her side. Louise flashed him a swift, bewildering smile of gratitude. Then she remembered she had a grievance against him and she stiffened. But then the feel of his arms came to her—the feel that she had scarcely been conscious of yesterday when the dark water lay at her feet,—and she blushed, and studied her plate diligently.
Under this cover, the young ranchman comforted Mary, whom the others had temporarily forgotten, with a long, caressing look from his handsome eyes that was a pledge of tireless vigilance and an unforgetting watchfulness of future protection.
[CHAPTER XVI—THE TRIAL]
The next morning, every available seat was filled early. People had blocked the rough plank walks leading to the court-house long before the doors were unlocked. The day promised to be fine, and the many teams coming and going between Kemah and the river to pick up the Velpen people who had crossed the ice on foot gave to the little town somewhat of the gala appearance of fair time. The stately and blanketed Sioux from their temporary camps on the flat were standing around, uncommunicative, waiting for proceedings to begin. Long before the judicial party had arrived from the hotel, the cramped room was crowded to its limits. There was loud talking, laughing, and joking. Local wits amused themselves and others by throwing quips at different members of the county bar or their brethren from across the river, as they walked to their places inside the railings with the little mannerisms that were peculiar to each. Some swaggered with their importance; others bore themselves with a ludicrous and exaggerated dignity; while a refreshing few, with absolute self-unconsciousness, sat down for the work in hand. The witty cowboys, restrained by no bothersome feelings of delicacy, took off every one in running asides that kept the room in uproar. Men who did not chew tobacco ate peanuts.
The door in the rear of the bar opened and Judge Dale entered. A comparative quiet fell upon the people. He mounted to his high bench. The clerk came in, then the court reporter. She tossed her note books on the table, leisurely pulled off her gloves and took her place, examining the ends of her pencils with a critical eye. It would be a busy day for the “gal reporter.” Then Langford came shoving his way down the crowded aisle with a sad-faced, brown-eyed, young woman in his wake, who yet held herself erect with a proud little tilt to her chin. There was not an empty seat outside the bar. Louise motioned, and he escorted Mary to a place within and sat down beside her. The jurymen were all in their chairs. Presently came in Gordon with his quiet, self-reliant manner. Langford had been right. The County Attorney was not tired to-day.
Shortly after Gordon came Small—Small, the dynamic, whose explosives had so often laid waste the weak and abortive independent reasoning powers of “Old Necessity” and his sort, and were the subject of much satire and some admiration when the legal fraternity talked “shop.” As he strode to his place, he radiated bombs of just and telling wrath. He scintillated with aggressiveness. With him came Jesse Black, easy and disdainful as of old. After them, a small man came gliding in with as little commotion as if he were sliding over the floor of a waxed dancing hall in patent-leather pumps. He was an unassuming little man with quick, cat-like movements which one lost if one were not on the alert. When he had slipped into a chair next to his associate, Small, the inflammable Small, towered above him head and shoulders.
“Every inch the criminal,” audibly observed a stranger, an Englishman over to invest in lands for stocking a horse ranch. “Strange how they always wear the imprint on their faces. No escaping it. I fancy that is what the Scriptures meant by the mark of Cain.”
The remark was addressed to no one in particular, but it reached the ears of Jim Munson, who was standing near.