“A drunken kid.”
“The jury and the judge accepted his testimony.”
“Did Blaze Nolan ever strike you as a man who would be engaged to a decent girl and then fight a gun battle with another man over a dance-hall girl?”
“Damn it—no! But facts are facts.”
“The testimony of a drunken kid is not always true facts, Kelton.”
“Oh, pshaw! Wasn’t Nolan found leaning over my son, a smoking gun in his hand? Don’t try to tell me that he was innocent. He had no defence.”
“I’ve heard all about that. After he was arrested, did you or any of his old friends go down to the jail and tell him yuh wanted to see him exonerate himself? Yuh did not. You glared at him through the trial, and said you’d like to hang him. Every damn one of yuh turned him down, pronounced him a murderer, even before his trial. You swore he was the worst wretch unhung. Kelton, you ruined his faith, and he didn’t want to fight back. That woman was gone, and she was the only person on earth who could prove that she was nothin’ to Blaze Nolan; that he didn’t even know her name.”
The old man shifted his gaze from Cultus and stared at the rug, his eyes half-closed. Somehow he had never looked at things in that light. He realised now that all of them had taken Alden Marsh’s word for everything. It couldn’t be undone now.
“It might interest yuh to know that the dance-hall girl is in the pay of Kendall Marsh, as a spy,” continued Cultus.
“Blaze Nolan is also in the pay of Kendall Marsh.”