Then a gunshot rang sharp outside, we heard a choking cough, and something fell through the door, shoving it wide open. Low Lived Joe lay dead in the pool of moonlight.
With a flying leap, I smashed through the inner door into the bedroom, and caught old Shifty climbing through the window from whence he had shot his partner. I took the smoking rifle, and led him back to the main room, where he crouched in his rawhide chair shaking all over, muttering, staring. The red glare from the stove was upon him as he faced that dread figure asprawl in the moonlit doorway. "'Twas me as done that," he kept saying with an air of surprise. "Me shorely 'as done that—'cause he sold my darter, Got-Wet, I done that."
His old squaw had followed us out of the bedroom, wrapped in a gray blanket, her gray hair streaming, her gray face cold as death, and in a dead voice, without emotion or even interest, she spoke across the room to me in Blackfoot.
"I lay aside the silence of fifty snows. It is the time for speaking. I speak to you, Charging Buffalo, and you must tell these Stone-hearts all my words."
I promised.
"My man, Bad Mouth, sitting there by the firelight, let that poor boy (Alabama Kid) run up a heap of debt. And the dead man there threatened him. Those two bad men drove the boy to stealing. They made him into a thief. The boy has done no wrong, and he is clean. Let him go."
"Mother," said I, when that was translated, "we thank you for words which will save the boy from prison."
She turned to my Brat. "Warrior," she said, and I translated phrase by phrase, "you loved my daughter, Got-Wet. The dead man there was her lover. She made him run away with her. Then she deserted him. He was too slow to keep her company on the way she went to shame. Think no more of my daughter, who laughs at you always.
"You, Bad Mouth," she spoke to her own man, "I am no longer your woman to be dragged down into shame. I am a daughter of those who do not lie, or cheat, or betray. I go to the camps of my people."
So, in the end, the Alabama Kid was acquitted, and is a wealthy rancher. Lane died in prison. His woman went to her people and lived in honor. As to my Brat, he was punished for breaking barracks, and promoted to the rank of corporal for his help in breaking up a gang of criminals.