“Murder!” echoed a voice from the doorway. Gansett Jim, his half-Indian, half-negro face alight with fury, stood there pointing with stiffened hand at Sedgwick. “Dah de murderer!”
[CHAPTER VI—THE RETREAT IN ORDER]
No one moved in the court room for appreciable seconds after that pronouncement. As a flash-light photograph fixes an assemblage poised, with eyes staring in one direction, thus the half-breed’s words had cast a spell of immobility over all. It was a stillness fraught with danger. No man could say in what violent form it might break.
First to recover from the surprise was the sheriff. “You, Jim, set down!” he shouted. “If there’s to be any accusin’ done here, I’ll do it.”
“I do it,” persisted the half-breed. “Blood is on his han’. I see it.”
Involuntarily Sedgwick looked at his right hand. There was a low growl from the crowd.
“Steady!” came Kent’s voice at his elbow. “Mistakes like that are Judge Lynch’s evidence.”
“Whah was he the night of the killin’?” cried Gansett Jim. “Ast him. Whah was he?”
“Where was you, if it comes to that?” retorted the sheriff, and bit his lip with a scowl.
At that betrayal Chester Kent’s eyelids flashed up, and instantly drooped again into somberness.