out, split 'em like peas, by gol! till he got to one place right before
the end. Then he pulled up sudden, and it got so quiet you could 'a heard
a pin drop. 'Gen'lemen of the jury,' says Freddy Tarlton here--gen'lemen,
by gol! all that lot--Lagan and the rest! 'Gen'lemen of the jury,' he
says, 'be you danged well sure that you're at one with God A'mighty in
this; that you've got at the core of justice here; that you've got
evidence to satisfy Him who you've all got to satisfy some day, or git
out. Not evidence as to shootin', but evidence as to what that shootin'
meant, an' whether it was meant to kill, an' what for. The case is like
this, gen'lemen of the jury,' says Freddy Tarlton here. 'Two men are in a
street alone. There's a shot, out comes everybody, and sees Fargo the
sheriff laid along the ground, his mouth in the dust, and a full-up gun
in his fingers. Not forty feet away stands Malachi with a gun smokin' in
his fist. It seems to be the opinion that it was cussedness--just
cussedness--that made Malachi turn the sheriff's boots to the sun. For
Malachi was quarrelsome. I'll give you a quarter on that. And the sheriff
was mettlesome, used to have high spirits, like as if he's lift himself
over the fence with his bootstraps. So when Malachi come and saw the
sheriff steppin' round in his paten' leathers, it give him the needle,
and he got a bead on him--and away went Sheriff Fargo--right away! That
seems to be the sense of the public.' And he stops again, soft and quick,
and looks the twelve in the eyes at once. 'But,' says Freddy Tarlton
here, 'are you goin' to hang a man on the little you know? Or are you
goin' to credit him with somethin' of what you don't know? You haint got
the inside of this thing, and Malachi doesn't let you know it, and God
keeps quiet. But be danged well sure that you've got the bulge on
iniquity here; for gen'lemen with pistols out in the street is one thing,
and sittin' weavin' a rope in a court-room for a man's neck is another
thing,' says Freddy Tarlton here. 'My client has refused to say one word
this or that way, but don't be sure that Some One that knows the inside