Denver Jim officiously dragged the schoolteacher to his feet.

“What’s your name?”

“Name?” asked the bewildered Gaspar.  “Why, everybody knows my name!”

“Don’t make any difference,” announced Sinclair.  “This is going to be a strictly regular hanging with no frills left marabout’s your name?”

“John Irving Gaspar.”

“Called Jig for short, and sometimes Cold Feet,” put in the clerk.

Sinclair cleared his throat.  “John Irving Gaspar, alias Jig, alias Cold Feet, d’you know what we got agin’ you?  Know what you’re charged with?”

“With—­with an absurd thing, sir.”

“Murder!” said Sinclair solemnly.  “Murder, Jig!  What d’you say, guilty or not guilty!  Most generally, you’d say not guilty.”

“Not guilty—­absolutely not guilty.  As a matter of fact, Mr. Sinclair—­”

“Denver, shut him up and make him sit down.”

One hard, brown hand was clapped over Jig’s mouth.  The other thrust him back on the black rock.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” said his honor, “you’ve heard the prisoner say he didn’t do it.  Now we’ll get down to the truth of it.  What’s the witnesses for the prosecution got to say?”

There was a pause of consideration.

“Speak up pronto,” said Sinclair.  “Anybody know anything agin’ the prisoner?”

Larsen stepped forward.  “Your honor, it’s pretty generally known—­”

“I don’t give a doggone for what’s generally known.  What d’you know?”

The Swede’s smile did not alter in the slightest, but his voice became blunter, more acrid.  From that moment he made up his mind firmly that he wanted to see John Irving Gaspar, otherwise Jig, hanged from the cottonwood tree above them.

“I was over to Shorty Lander’s store the other day—­”

His honor raised his hand in weary protest, as he smiled apologetically at the court.  “Darned if I didn’t plumb forget one thing,” he said.  “We got to swear in these witnesses before they can chatter.  Is there anybody got a Bible around ’em?  Nope?  Montana, I wished you’d lope over to that house and see what they got in the line of Bibles.”

Montana strode away in the direction of the house, and quiet fell over the unique courtroom.  Larsen, so pleasant of face and so unbending of heart, was the first to speak.

“Looks to me, gents, like we’re wasting a lot of time on a rat!”

The blond head of Cold Feet turned, and his large, dark eyes rested without expression upon the face of the Swede.  He seemed almost literally to fold his hands and await the result of his trial.  The illusion was so complete that even Riley Sinclair began to feel that the prisoner might be guilty—­of an act which he himself had done!  The opportunity was indeed too perfect to be dismissed without consideration.  It was in his power definitely to put the blame on another man; then he could remain in this community as long as he wished, to work his will upon Sandersen.