Let me read you the letter from which Mr. Ker draws the inference that there was a conspiracy. It is on page 885:
Washington, D. C., August 19, 1878. Frank A. Tuttle, Box 44, Pueblo, Colo.,
Dear Sir: Yours 14th received. We accept your proposition, provided (so that there shall be no conflict) that a friend of ours, who has recently gone to Colorado, has not made different arrangements before we can get him word.
The petition for expedition should be separate from the petition for increase of number of trips. We make no boast of being solid with anybody, but can get what is reasonable. Yours, truly,
MINER, PECK & CO.
You are told that is evidence of a conspiracy. Suppose the letter had been this way: "We boast of being solid. We can get anything, whether reasonable or not." That probably would have been evidence of perfect innocence. He writes a letter and says:
We make no boast of being solid with anybody, but can get what is reasonable.
They say that is evidence of conspiracy. Suppose he had written the opposite, "We do boast of being solid and we can get anything, whether it is reasonable or not." According to their logic that would have been evidence of absolute innocence. Whenever you are suspicious you extract poison from the fairest and sweetest flowers. Prejudice and suspicion turn every fact against a defendant.
On page 4557 Mr. Ker tells us that Vaile never saw Peck, and yet had the impudence to write that his subcontract was signed by Peck in person. The subcontract is in evidence here. Nobody pretends that it was not signed by Peck, and yet that is brought forward as a suspicious circumstance against Mr. Vaile, because there is no evidence that Mr. Vaile ever saw Mr. Peck. Is there anything in a point like that? "My contract was signed by Mr. Peck in person." He does not mean by that that he saw him sign it. The evidence here is that it was signed by Peck, and yet the fact that he says Peck did sign it, and the fact that he had never seen Peck, Mr. Ker endeavors to torture so that you will think he wrote what he knew to be untrue.
On page 3251 Mr. Ker says that Miner does not deny writing the letter marked 63 E. This letter was dated the 10th day of May, 1879, and was on one of the Dorsey routes.