“Ha! Smith—black beard—forbidding aspect! It strikes me that I too have seen the man,” said Ned Sinton, who related to McLeod the visit paid to them in their camp by the surly stranger. While he was speaking, Larry O’Neil sat pondering something in his mind.
“Mister McLeod,” said he, when Ned concluded, “will ye shew me the body o’ this man? faix, I’m of opinion I can prove the murder; but, first of all, how is the black villain to be diskivered?”
“No difficulty about that. He is even now in the colony. I saw him in a gambling-house half-an-hour since. My fear is that, now the murder’s out, he’ll bolt before we can secure him.”
“It’s little trouble we’d have in preventin’ that,” suggested Larry.
“The consequences might be more serious, however, than you imagine. Suppose you were to seize and accuse him, and fail to prove the murder, the jury would acquit him, and the first thing he would do, on being set free, would be to shoot you, for which act the morality of the miners would rather applaud him than otherwise. It is only on cold-blooded, unprovoked murder and theft that Judge Lynch is severe. It is a recognised rule here, that if a man, in a row, should merely make a motion with his hand towards his pistol, his opponent is entitled to shoot him first if he can. The consequence is, that bloody quarrels are very rare.”
“Niver a taste do I care,” cried Larry; “they may hang me tshoo times over, but I’ll prove the murder, an’ nab the murderin’ blackguard too.”
“Have a care,” said Ned; “you’ll get yourself into a scrape.”
“Make sure you are right before you act,” added Maxton. Larry O’Neil paid no attention to these warnings. “Are ye ready to go, Mister McLeod?” said he, impatiently.
“Quite,” replied the other.
“Then come along.” And the two left the camp together, armed with their rifles, knives, revolvers, and a shovel.