“Did you see Jeffrey Whiting’s gun?”
“Yes.”
“Did you examine it?”
“Yes.”
“Had it been fired off?”
“Yes.”
“Excused,” snapped the prosecutor. And the old man, almost in tears, came down from the stand. He knew that his simple yes and no answers had made the most damaging sort of evidence.
Then the prosecutor went back in the story to establish a motive. He called several witnesses who had been agents of the railroad and associated 227 in one way or another with the murdered man in his efforts to get options on the farm lands in the hills. Even these witnesses, though they were ready to give details and opinions which might have been favorable to his side of the case, he held down strictly to answering with a word his own carefully thought out questions.
With these answers the prosecutor built up a solid continuity of cause and effect from the day when Rogers had first come into the hills to offer Jeffrey Whiting a part in the work with himself right up to the moment when the two had faced each other that morning on Bald Mountain.
He showed that Jeffrey Whiting had begun to undermine and oppose Rogers’ work from the first. He showed why. Jeffrey Whiting came of a family well known and trusted in the hills. The young man had been quick to grasp the situation and to believe that he could keep the people from dealing at all with Rogers. Rogers’ work would then be a failure. Jeffrey Whiting would then be pointed to as the only man who could get the options from the people. They would sell or hold out at his word. The railroad would have to deal with him direct, and at his terms.