His confession—irregular as it may have been—has done more for his defence than the most eloquent speech his counsel could have delivered.
Still it is but his own tale; and other testimony will be required to clear him.
Where is the witness upon whom so much is supposed to depend. Where is Zeb Stump?
Five hundred pairs of eyes turn towards the prairie, and scan the horizon with inquiring gaze. Five hundred hearts throb with a mad impatience for the return of the old hunter—with or without Cassius Calhoun—with or without the Headless Horse, man—now no longer either myth or mystery, but a natural phenomenon, explained and comprehended.
It is not necessary to say to that assemblage, that the thing is an improbability—much less to pronounce it impossible. They are Texans of the south-west—denizens of the high upland plateau, bordering upon the “Staked Plain,” from which springs the lovely Leona, and where the river of Nuts heads in a hundred crystal streams.
They are dwellers in a land, where death can scarce be said to have its successor in decay; where the stag struck down in its tracks—or the wild steed succumbing to some hapless chance—unless by wild beasts devoured, will, after a time, bid defiance both to the laws of corruption and the teeth of the coyoté; where the corpse of mortal man himself, left uncoffined and uncovered, will, in the short period of eight-and-forty hours, exhibit the signs, and partake of the qualities, of a mummy freshly exhumed from the catacombs of Egypt!
But few upon the ground who are not acquainted with this peculiarity of the Texan climate—that section of it close to the Sierra Madro—and more especially among the spurs of the Llano Estacado.
Should the Headless Horseman be led back under the live oak, there is not one who will be surprised to see the dead body of Henry Poindexter scarce showing the incipient signs of decomposition. If there be any incredulity about the story just told them, it is not on this account; and they stand in impatient expectation, not because they require it to be confirmed.
Their impatience may be traced to a different cause—a suspicion, awakened at an early period of the trial, and which, during its progress, has been gradually growing stronger; until it has at length assumed almost the shape of a belief.
It is to confirm, or dissipate this, that nearly every man upon the ground—every woman as well—chafes at the absence of that witness, whose testimony is expected to restore the accused to his liberty, or consign him to the gallows tree.