"Whut is all this fuss about, anyhow?" questioned the marshal, evidently somewhat aggrieved. "I wus just eatin' dinner when a feller stuck his head in an' yelled ye'd killed somebody over at the Occidental."
Hampton turned his face gravely toward him. "Buck, I don't know whether you'll believe me or not, but I guess you never heard me tell a lie, or knew of my trying to dodge out of a bad scrape. Besides, I have n't anything to gain now, for I reckon you 're planning to stay with me, guilty or not guilty, but I did not kill that fellow. I don't exactly see how I can prove it, the way it all happened, but I give you my word as a man, I did not kill him."
Mason looked him squarely in the eyes, his teeth showing behind his stiff, closely clipped mustache. Then he deliberately extended his hand, and gripped Hampton's. "Of course I believe ye. Not that you 're any too blame good, Bob, but you ain't the kind what pleads the baby act. Who was the feller?"
"Red Slavin."
"No!" and the hand grip perceptibly tightened. "Holy Moses, what ingratitude! Why, the camp ought to get together and give ye a vote of thanks, and instead, here they are trying their level best to hang you. Cussedest sorter thing a mob is, anyhow; goes like a flock o' sheep after a leader, an' I bet I could name the fellers who are a-runnin' that crowd. How did the thing happen?"
Both men were intently observing the ingathering of their scattered pursuers, but Hampton answered gravely, telling his brief story with careful detail, appreciating the importance of reposing full confidence in this quiet, resourceful companion. The little marshal was all grit, nerve, faithfulness to duty, from his head to his heels.
"All I really saw of the fellow," he concluded, "was a hand and arm as they drove in the knife. You can see there where it ripped me, and the unexpected blow of the man's body knocked me forward, and of course I fell on Slavin. It may be I drove the point farther in when I came down, but that was an accident. The fact is, Buck, I had every reason to wish Slavin to live. I was just getting out of him some information I needed."
Mason nodded, his eyes wandering from Hampton's expressive face to the crowd beginning to collect beneath the shade of a huge oak a hundred yards below.
"Never carry a knife, do ye?"
"No."