Ay, grandly mistaken, when you imagine yourself standing on the same political platform with those quasi-rude frontiersmen of Texas.
Nothing of the kind. They are “sovereign citizens”—the peers of your superiors, or of those who assume so to call themselves, and whose assumption you are base enough to permit without struggle—almost without protest!
In most assemblies the inner circle is the more select. The gem is to be found in the centre at Port Inge.
In that now mustered the order is reversed. Outside is the elegance. The fair feminine forms, bedecked in their best dresses, stand up in spring waggons, or sit in more elegant equipages, sufficiently elevated to see over the heads of the male spectators.
It is not upon the judge that their eyes are bent, or only at intervals. The glances are given to a group of three men, placed near the jury, and not very far from the stem of the tree. One is seated, and two standing. The former is the prisoner at the bar; the latter the sheriff’s officers in charge of him.
It was originally intended to try several other men for the murder; Miguel Diaz and his associates, as also Phelim O’Neal.
But in the course of a preliminary investigation the Mexican mustanger succeeded in proving an alibi, as did also his trio of companions. All four have been consequently discharged.
They acknowledged having disguised themselves as Indians: for the fact being proved home to them, they could not do less.
But they pretended it to have been a joke—a travestie; and as there was proof of the others being at home—and Diaz dead drunk—on the night of Henry Poindexter’s disappearance, their statement satisfied those who had been entrusted with the inquiry.