“I put up with his drunken yellin’ till I felt the bucket bump the first level.  Then I sez, ‘Now, my gen’leman, hand over that bottle o’ tipperary, an’ scat out o’ this!’ There it is,” the Sheriff laid a black square whiskey bottle on the desk.  “He began jawin’ an’ cuttin’ up gineral.  T’ make a long story short, I took him by the scruff o’ th’ neck and helped him down Smelter City trail an’-an’-an’ I jugged him:  that’s all; an’ there he is yet!  When I came back up, this had happened.”

“When you arrested O’Finnigan for drunkenness, where was the woman, Calamity?”

“Hidin’ back among th’ cottonwoods!  She’d slid off her horse!  Jes’ as I turned down the trail, I looked back!  She waz comin’ peepin’ out from tree t’ tree!”

“How was MacDonald standing?”

“He waz standin’ with his back t’ her, with his hand hangin’ kind o’ loose from th’ hoist waitin’ for ’em t’ ring th’ bell t’ let her down t’ next level!”

There was a long silence.  Eleanor had turned very white.  The eyes of the news editor emitted sparks.

“I expected that,” commented Wayland.

“Y’ d’, did y’?” rumbled Matthews.  “Then A ’ll wager y ’ll nut be expectin’ what A ’ll spring!”

The room suddenly filled with a rustling and whispering.  Men were demonstrating exactly how it had happened.  The handy man’s tallow smile melted on his face; and the tortoise shell eyes looked sidewise at Wayland.  The look wasn’t malicious; and it wasn’t triumphant.  It was the look of a gambler saying, “Come on my four-flusher, beat that!  Show down!” The rabble outside deployed off the pavement across the street back a whole block.  Eleanor could hear the hum through the open window.

The attorney was leaning across the table conferring with the coroner.

The coroner rapped the table and cried for “order.”

The room suddenly silenced.

“Gentlemen, as this evidence will have to be handed in to the district attorney for what action he deems best, I wish to ask one more question.  Mr. Sheriff, you know this Valley and the people in it well?”

“I do, known it for twenty years.”

“Do you know of any reason why this woman Calamity would have shot or wished to shoot, her employer, MacDonald?”

The Sheriff changed a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other.

Eleanor leaned forward looking straight in his eyes.  Bat was eyeing Eleanor quizzically. (Had he constructed the evidence so skilfully that he had come to believe it himself?) Matthews was almost tearing the arms out of the chair where he sat.

“Well,” said Sheriff Flood clasping his hands in rest across his portly person.  “I guess squaw is same as any other woman in one respect.  I guess she had same reason for shootin’ MacDonal’ as any other woman in her place would o’ had,” and he looked up well pleased with himself at the roomful.  For a moment, there was deadly heavy silence; then the hum of the crowd on the steps pouring the word out to those in the street.