“Wasn’t you along with the rest up to Idaho Bar?” inquired the Judge in a friendly voice.

“Y-yes.”

“Not when we all were!  No!” Maudie’s tear-washed eyes were regaining a dangerous brightness.  “I wanted him to come with me.  He wouldn’t, and we quarrelled.”

“We didn’t.”

“You didn’t quarrel?” put in the Judge.

“We did,” said Maudie, breathless.

“Not about that.  It was because she wanted another feller to come, too.”  Again he shot an angry glance at the Kentuckian.

“And Charlie said if I gave the other feller the tip, he wouldn’t come.  And he’d get even with me, if it took a leg!”

“Well, it looks like he done it.”

“Can’t you prove an alibi?  Thought you said you was along with the rest to Idaho Bar?” suggested Windy Jim.

“So I was.”

“I didn’t see you,” Maudie flashed.

“When were you there?” asked the Judge.

“Last night.”

“Oh, yes!  When everybody else was comin’ home.  You all know if that’s the time Charlie usually goes on a stampede!”

“You——­”

If words could slay, Maudie would have dropped dead, riddled with a dozen mortal wounds.  But she lived to reply in kind.  Charlie’s abandonment of coherent defence was against him.  While he wallowed blindly in a mire of offensive epithet, his fellow-citizens came to dark conclusions.  He had an old score to pay off against Maudie, they all knew that.  Had he chosen this way?  What other so effectual?  He might even say most of that dust was his, anyway.  But it was an alarming precedent.  The fire of Maudie’s excitement had caught and spread.  Eve the less inflammable muttered darkly that it was all up with Minook, if a person couldn’t go on a stampede without havin’ his dust took out of his cabin.  The crowd was pressing Charlie, and twenty cross-questions were asked him in a minute.  He, beside himself with rage, or fear, or both, lost all power except to curse.

The Judge seemed to be taking down damning evidence on the dirty envelope.  Some were suggesting: 

“Bring him over to the court.”

“Yes, try him straight away.”

No-Thumb-Jack was heard above the din, saying it was all gammon wasting time over a trial, or even—­in a plain case like this—­for the Judge to require the usual complaint made in writing and signed by three citizens.

Two men laid hold of the Canadian, and he turned ghastly white under his tan.

“Me?  Me tief?  You—­let me alone!” He began to struggle.  His terrified eyes rolling round the little cabin, fell on Butts.

“I don’ know but one tief in Minook,” he said wildly, like a man wandering in a fever, and unconscious of having spoken, till he noticed there was a diversion of some sort.  People were looking at Butts.  A sudden inspiration pierced the Canadian’s fog of terror.

“You know what Butts done to Jack McQuestion.  You ain’t forgot how he sneaked Jack’s watch!” The incident was historic.