We were silent amid the din of triumph now raised by Tucson. In the laughter, the hand-shaking, the shouting, and the jubilant pistol-shots that some particularly free spirit fired in the old Cathedral Square, we went to our dinner; and not even Stirling could joke. “There’s a certain natural justice done here in spite of them,” he said. “They are not one cent richer for all their looted twenty-eight thousand. They come out free, but penniless.”
“How about Jenks and that jury?” said I. And Stirling shrugged his shoulders.
But we had yet some crowning impudence to learn. Later, in the street, the officers and I met the prisoners, their witnesses, and their counsel emerging from a photographer’s studio. The Territorial Delegate had been taken in a group with his acquitted thieves. The Bishop had declined to be in this souvenir.
“That’s a picture I want,” said I. “Only I’ll be sorry to see your face there,” I added to black curly.
“Indeed!” put in Jenks.
“Yes,” said I. “You and he do not belong in the same class. By-the-way, Mr. Jenks, I suppose you’ll return their horses and saddles now?”
Too many were listening for him to lose his temper, and he did a sharp thing. He took this public opportunity for breaking some news to his clients. “I had hoped to,” he said; “that is, as many as were not needed to defray necessary costs. But it’s been an expensive suit, and I’ve found myself obliged to sell them all. It’s little enough to pay for clearing your character, boys.”
They saw through his perfidy to them, and that he had them checkmated. Any protest from them would be a confession of their theft. Yet it seemed an unsafe piece of villany in Jenks.
“They look disappointed,” I remarked. “I shall value the picture very highly.”