“There’s no need to speak of him, Eve,” he cried. “Leave it to me, and I’ll tell them how Will came by his death––now.”
But the doctor interfered. He signed to one of the men to release the prisoner.
“We’ll have Mrs. Henderson’s story first,” he said decidedly. “You’ll please get right ahead, ma’am.”
There was just the briefest possible hesitation. For a second Eve’s eyes wandered over the faces now gathered so closely about. It was not that she was any longer afraid. It was merely that she looked for one friendly glance. She found it in the round face of Angel Gay. He was smiling on her. And at once she plunged into her story.
“Will Henderson––my husband, was the cattle-thief,” she said. And for a moment she could go no further. Had she desired to create a sensation, she amply succeeded. The doctor had to call for silence so that she might proceed.
Having made the plunge, her story came clearly and concisely. She told everything without sparing either herself or her husband. She began from the time when Will had been ordered out of Barnriff, and told all the pitiful, sordid details, right down to his final return after escaping from the doctor’s men at the Little Bluff River. Everything she told as she knew it, except the part Jim had played in his actual escape. This she could not bring herself to speak of.
The story took some time in the telling, but there was not a man amongst those assembled that did not hungrily 397 take in every detail of it. And as it unrolled, to the final scene of Will’s return, when again he ill-used her and departed in search of Elia to kill him, and his final promise to return later and kill her, a fierce light of understanding grew on the swarthy, rough faces, and muttered imprecations flew from lip to lip. All bitterness for Jim had passed from their thoughts, all except, perhaps, from the thoughts of Smallbones.
And Jim remained silent all the time. He, too, was listening. He, too, shared again in the thoughts which now assailed the others. The hideous brutality, as it appeared, told in Eve’s simple words, set his blood boiling afresh against the dead man. Though he knew it all only too well, it still had power to rouse the worst side of his nature.
At the conclusion, Doc Crombie suddenly turned to Jim. He offered no comment, no sympathy.
“Now, I guess, you’ll talk some,” he said, in his usual harsh tone. But somehow his words seemed to contain a smile.