"Mr. Chairman and men: I do not know the business you have at present before you, but I do know that I have more important business to place before you. Just outside this cabin is a man probably dying from starvation. We have brought him from across the river. We should not have bothered you, but we were unable to make our own island. This man I speak of needs immediate attention."
"A couple of you nearest the door go out and look after him," the chairman ordered. "And you, Doc Holiday, go along and see what you can do."
"Ask for a recess," St. Vincent whispered.
Frona nodded her head. "And, Mr. Chairman, I make a motion for a recess until the man is cared for."
Cries of "No recess!" and "Go on with the business!" greeted the putting of it, and the motion was lost.
"Now, Gregory," with a smile and salutation as she took the stool beside him, "what is it?"
He gripped her hand tightly. "Don't believe them, Frona. They are trying to"--with a gulping swallow--"to kill me."
"Why? Do be calm. Tell me."
"Why, last night," he began hurriedly, but broke off to listen to the Scandinavian previously sworn, who was speaking with ponderous slowness.
"I wake wide open quick," he was saying. "I coom to the door. I there hear one shot more."
He was interrupted by a warm-complexioned man, clad in faded mackinaws. "What did you think?" he asked.
"Eh?" the witness queried, his face dark and troubled with perplexity.
"When you came to the door, what was your first thought?"
"A-w-w," the man sighed, his face clearing and infinite comprehension sounding in his voice. "I have no moccasins. I t'ink pretty damn cold." His satisfied expression changed to naive surprise when an outburst of laughter greeted his statement, but he went on stolidly. "One more shot I hear, and I run down the trail."
Then Corliss pressed in through the crowd to Frona, and she lost what the man was saying.
"What's up?" the engineer was asking. "Anything serious? Can I be of any use?"
"Yes, yes." She caught his hand gratefully. "Get over the back-channel somehow and tell my father to come. Tell him that Gregory St. Vincent is in trouble; that he is charged with-- What are you charged with, Gregory?" she asked, turning to him.
"Murder."
"Murder?" from Corliss.
"Yes, yes. Say that he is charged with murder; that I am here; and that I need him. And tell him to bring me some clothes. And, Vance,"--with a pressure of the hand and swift upward look,--"don't take any . . . any big chances, but do try to make it."
"Oh, I'll make it all right." He tossed his head confidently and proceeded to elbow his way towards the door.
"Who is helping you in your defence?" she asked St. Vincent.
He shook his head. "No. They wanted to appoint some one,--a renegade lawyer from the States, Bill Brown,--but I declined him. He's taken the other side, now. It's lynch law, you know, and their minds are made up. They're bound to get me."
"I wish there were time to hear your side."
"But, Frona, I am innocent. I--"
"S-sh!" She laid her hand on his arm to hush him, and turned her attention to the witness.
"So the noospaper feller, he fight like anything; but Pierre and me, we pull him into the shack. He cry and stand in one place--"
"Who cried?" interrupted the prosecuting lawyer.
"Him. That feller there." The Scandinavian pointed directly at St. Vincent. "And I make a light. The slush-lamp I find spilt over most everything, but I have a candle in my pocket. It is good practice to carry a candle in the pocket," he affirmed gravely. "And Borg he lay on the floor dead. And the squaw say he did it, and then she die, too."
"Said who did it?"
Again his accusing finger singled out St. Vincent. "Him. That feller there."
"Did she?" Frona whispered.
"Yes," St. Vincent whispered back, "she did. But I cannot imagine what prompted her. She must have been out of her head."
The warm-faced man in the faded mackinaws then put the witness through a searching examination, which Frona followed closely, but which elicited little new.
"You have the right to cross-examine the witness," the chairman informed St. Vincent. "Any questions you want to ask?"
The correspondent shook his head.
"Go on," Frona urged.
"What's the use?" he asked, hopelessly. "I'm fore-doomed. The verdict was reached before the trial began."
"One moment, please." Frona's sharp command arrested the retiring witness. "You do not know of your own knowledge who committed this murder?"
The Scandinavian gazed at her with a bovine expression on his leaden features, as though waiting for her question to percolate to his understanding.
"You did not see who did it?" she asked again.
"Aw, yes. That feller there," accusative finger to the fore. "She say he did."
There was a general smile at this.
"But you did not see it?"
"I hear some shooting."
"But you did not see who did the shooting?"
"Aw, no; but she said--"
"That will do, thank you," she said sweetly, and the man retired.
The prosecution consulted its notes. "Pierre La Flitche!" was called out.
A slender, swart-skinned man, lithe of figure and graceful, stepped forward to the open space before the table. He was darkly handsome, with a quick, eloquent eye which roved frankly everywhere. It rested for a moment on Frona, open and honest in its admiration, and she smiled and half-nodded, for she liked him at first glance, and it seemed as though they had met of old time. He smiled pleasantly back, the smooth upper lip curling brightly and showing beautiful teeth, immaculately white.
In answer to the stereotyped preliminaries he stated that his name was that of his father's, a descendant of the coureurs du bois. His mother--with a shrug of the shoulders and flash of teeth--was a breed. He was born somewhere in the Barrens, on a hunting trip, he did not know where. Ah, oui, men called him an old-timer. He had come into the country in the days of Jack McQuestion, across the Rockies from the Great Slave.
On being told to go ahead with what he knew of the matter in hand, he deliberated a moment, as though casting about for the best departure.
"In the spring it is good to sleep with the open door," he began, his words sounding clear and flute-like and marked by haunting memories of the accents his forbears put into the tongue. "And so I sleep last night. But I sleep like the cat. The fall of the leaf, the breath of the wind, and my ears whisper to me, whisper, whisper, all the night long. So, the first shot," with a quick snap of the fingers, "and I am awake, just like that, and I am at the door."
St. Vincent leaned forward to Frona. "It was not the first shot."
She nodded, with her eyes still bent on La Flitche, who gallantly waited.
"Then two more shot," he went on, "quick, together, boom-boom, just like that. 'Borg's shack,' I say to myself, and run down the trail. I think Borg kill Bella, which was bad. Bella very fine girl," he confided with one of his irresistible smiles. "I like Bella. So I run. And John he run from his cabin like a fat cow, with great noise. 'What the matter?' he say; and I say, 'I don't know.' And then something come, wheugh! out of the dark, just like that, and knock John down, and knock me down. We grab everywhere