"That's right," Auguste said bitterly. "Because all my witnesses are dead."
"Don't try to get us to feel sorry for you," Bennett rasped. "This courtroom is full of people who've seen loved ones stabbed, shot, scalped, cut to pieces, burnt to ashes. At the hands of your Indians." He raised his voice to a shout. "And while that was happening, you were behind the red fiends! Urging them on to kill and kill some more!" He turned away, face twisted in disgust. "I have no more questions for you."
Cooper said, "Does the defense have any more witnesses?"
"No, Your Honor," said Ford, and Auguste's heart sank as he walked back to his seat. Bennett, he felt, had finished him with those few sentences reminding people what the Sauk had done to them.
Auguste turned to Ford, whose round face was blank, unreadable. No hope there. Ford had done his best, Auguste was sure. But he had no more chance against the hatred here in Victor than Black Hawk's band had against the armies of the United States.
I am going to be hanged.
"Hold it there!" called a voice from the doorway of the courtroom. "He has got two more witnesses."
Auguste saw a tall, mustached man thumping up from the back of the court with the aid of a crutch and a peg leg. Beside him a skinny man with a small head and a gap-toothed grin shuffled over the plank floor. A rifle hung from one long arm.
It took him a moment to recognize Otto Wegner and Eli Greenglove.
Alert, wary, he watched them come up the aisle between the spectators' chairs.