“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?” demanded Flora, her eyes glowing.  “It sounds to me exactly like a piece of spiteful old-woman gossip, and I don’t believe a word of it!”

“Jim ain’t a gossip.  He kept his mouth shut because he didn’t want to make trouble, and he was under the impression the Swede had borrowed a gun somewhere.  Being half drunk, he could easy forget what he’d done with his own, and the Pilgrim put up such a straight story—­”

“Fred told the truth.  I know he did.  I don’t believe he had a gun that night, because—­because I had asked him as a favor to please not carry one to dances and places.  There, now!  He’d do what I asked him to.  I know he would.  And I think you’re just mean, to talk like this about him; and, mind you, if he wants to come here he can.  I don’t care if he comes every day!” She was so near to tears that her voice broke and kept her from saying more that was foolish.