nd and killed his dog" (the reproach of her tone, then!) "because
you imagined a lot that wasn't true, you ought to go straight and
apologize."

"I don't _think_ I will! Good Lord! Flora, do yuh think I don't _know_
the stuff he's made of? He's a low-down, cowardly cur--the kind uh
man that is always bragging about--" (Billy stuck there. With her big,
innocent eyes looking up at him, he could not say "bragging about the
women he's ruined," so he changed weakly) "about all he's done. He's a
murderer that ought by rights t' be in the pen right now--"

"I think that will do, Billy!" she interrupted indignantly. "You know
he couldn't help killing that man."

"I kinda believed that, too, till I run onto Jim Johnson up in Tower.
You don't know Jim, but he's a straight man and wouldn't lie. Yuh
remember, Flora, the Pilgrim told me the Swede pulled a knife on
him. I stooped down and looked, and _I_ didn't see no knife--nor gun,
either. And I wasn't so blamed excited I'd be apt to pass up anything
like that; I've seen men shot before, and pass out with their boots
on, in more excitable ways than a little, plain, old killing. So I
didn't see anything in the shape of a weapon. But when I come back,
here lays a Colt forty-five right in plain sight, and the Pilgrim
saying, 'He pulled a _gun_ on me,' right on top uh telling me it was
a _knife_. I thought at the time there was something queer about that,
and about him not having a gun on him when I know he _always_ packed
one--like every other fool Pilgrim that comes West with the idea he's
got to fight his way along from breakfast to supper, and sleep with
his six-gun under his pillow!"

"And _I_ know you don't like him, and you'd think he had some ulterior
motive if he rolled his cigarette backward once! I don't see anything
but just your dislike trying to twist things--"

"Well, hold on a minute! I got to talking with Jim, and we're pretty
good friends. So he told me on the quiet that Gus Svenstrom gave him
his gun to keep, that night. Gus was drinking, and said he didn't want
to be packing it around for fear he might get foolish with it. Jim
had it--Jim was tending bar that time in that little log saloon, in
Hardup--when the Swede was killed. So it wasn't _the Swedes_ gun on
the ground--and if he borrowed one, which he wouldn't be apt to do,
why didn't the fellow he got it from claim it?"

"And if all this is true, why didn't your friend come and testify
at the hearing?" de