Haight threatened him with his forefinger. “Won’t you swear that the defendant fired that shot? Don’t you know he fired it?”
“I—I can’t swear to it.”
“Weren’t you convinced that it was McCoy who——”
The defense objected angrily: “The witness has answered the question. Is the prosecuting attorney trying to bully him to change that answer?”
When at last Haight was through with him the witness dripped with perspiration. But his troubles were only beginning. The lawyers for the defense took him in hand, made him confess his obligations to McCoy, brought out that he himself had proposed the raid, and wrung from him that he was turning State’s evidence to save his own life at the expense of his friends. Two points they developed in favour of their client—that he had repeatedly warned his friends against shooting and that he had saved the lives of the herders from Falkner.
But though Silcott was left a rag, his story stood the fire of cross-examination. When he stepped down from the stand he left behind him a net of evidence through which McCoy could not break.
As Larry moved down the aisle someone in the back part of the room broke the silence: “You damned Judas!”
Instantly echoes of the word filled the courtroom. The judge pounded with his gavel for silence, but that low-hissed “Judas! Judas!” pursued the young cowman down the stairs. It would be many years before he could recall without scalding shame that moment when the finger of public scorn was pointed at him in execration.