"Ain't it enough?" Kootenay Jim snarled.
"No, it isn't. You were tried for murder once yourself, Kootenay, and you got off, though everybody knew it was the dead man's money in your pocket. You got off because nobody saw you kill the man, and the circumstantial evidence gave you the benefit of the doubt."
"I ain't bein' tried for this, Bulldog. Your bringin' up old scores might get you in wrong."
"You're not being tried, Kootenay, but another man is, and I say he's got to have a fair chance. You bring him here, boys, and let me hear his story; that's only fair, men amongst men. Because I give you fair warning, boys, if this lynching goes through, and you're in wrong, I'm going to denounce you; not one of you will get away—not one!"
"We'll bring him, Bulldog," Graham said; "what you say is only fair, but swing he will."
Jeanette's brother had been locked in the pen in the log police barracks. He was brought into the Gold Nugget, and his defence was what might be called powerfully weak. It was simply a statement that he had bought the cayuse from an Indian on the trail outside Bucking Horse. He refused to say where he had got the gold, simply declaring that he had killed nobody, had never seen Fourteen-foot Johnson, and knew nothing about the murder..
Something in the earnestness of the man convinced Carney that he was innocent. However, that was, so far as Carney's action was concerned, a minor matter; it was Jeanette's brother, and he was going to save him from being lynched if he had to fight the roomful of men—there was no doubt whatever about that in his mind.
"I can't say, boys," Carney began, "that you can be blamed for thinking you've got the right man."
"That's what we figgered," Graham declared.
"But you've not gone far enough in sifting the evidence if you sure don't want to lynch an innocent man. The only evidence you have is that you caught Flarry on Johnson's cayuse. How do you know it's Johnson's cayuse?"