CHAPTER IX

The trial got started the next morning with a minimum amount of

objections from Sidney. The charges and specifications were duly read,

the three defendants pleaded not guilty, and then Goodham advanced with

a paper in his hand to address the court. Sidney scampered up to take

his position beside him.

"Your Honor, the prosecution wishes, subject to agreement of the

defense, to enter the following stipulations, to wit: First, that the

late Silas Cumshaw was a practicing politician within the meaning of the

law. Second, that he is now dead, and came to his death in the manner

attested to by the coroner of Sam Houston Continent. Third, that he came

to his death at the hands of the defendants here present."

In all my planning, I'd forgotten that. I couldn't let those

stipulations stand without protest, and at the same time, if I protested

the characterization of Cumshaw as a practicing politician, the trial

could easily end right there. So I prayed for a miracle, and Clement

Sidney promptly obliged me.

"Defense won't stipulate anything!" he barked. "My clients, here, are

victims of a monstrous conspiracy, a conspiracy to conceal the true

facts of the death of Silas Cumshaw. They ought never to have been

arrested or brought here, and if the prosecution wants to establish

anything, they can do it by testimony, in the regular and lawful way.

This practice of free-wheeling stipulation is only one of the many

devices by which the courts of this planet are being perverted to serve

the corrupt and unjust ends of a gang of reactionary landowners!"

Judge Nelson's gavel hit the bench with a crack like a rifle shot.

"Mr. Sidney! In justice to your clients, I would hate to force them to

change lawyers in the middle of their trial, but if I hear another

remark like that about the courts of New Texas, that's exactly what will

happen, because you'll be in jail for contempt! Is that clear, Mr.

Sidney?"

I settled back with a deep sigh of relief which got me, I noticed,

curious stares from my fellow Ambassadors. I disregarded the questions

in their glances; I had what I wanted.

They began calling up the witnesses.

First, the doctor who had certified Ambassador Cumshaw's death. He gave

a concise description of the wounds which had killed my predecessor.

Sidney was trying to make something out of the fact that he was

Hickock's family physician, and consuming more time, when I got up.

"Your Honor, I am present here as _amicus curiae_, because of the

obvious interest which the Government of the Solar League has in this

case...."

"Objection!" Sidney yelled.

"Please state it," Nelson invited.

"This is a court of the people of the planet of New Texas. This foreign

emissary of the Solar League, sent here to conspire with New Texan

traitors to the end that New Texans shall be reduced to a supine and

ravished satrapy of the all-devouring empire of the Galaxy--"

Judge Nelson rapped sharply.

"Friends of the court are defined as persons having a proper interest in

the case. As this case arises from the death of the former Ambassador of

the Solar League, I cannot see how the present Ambassador and his staff

can be excluded. Overruled." He nodded to me. "Continue, Mr.

Ambassador."

"As I understand, I have the same rights of cross-examination of

witnesses as counsel for the prosecution and defense; is that correct,

Your Honor?" It was, so I turned to the witness. "I suppose, Doctor,

that you have had quite a bit of experience, in your practice, with

gunshot wounds?"

He chuckled. "Mr. Ambassador, it is gunshot-wound cases which keep the

practice of medicine and surgery alive on this planet. Yes, I definitely

have."

"Now, you say that the deceased was hit by six different projectiles:

right shoulder almost completely severed, right lung and right ribs

blown out of the chest, spleen and kidneys so intermingled as to be

practically one, and left leg severed by complete shattering of the left

pelvis and hip-joint?"

"That's right."

I picked up the 20-mm auto-rifle--it weighed a good sixty pounds--from

the table, and asked him if this weapon could have inflicted such

wounds. He agreed that it both could and had.

"This the usual type of weapon used in your New Texas political

liquidations?" I asked.

"Certainly not. The usual weapons are pistols; sometimes a hunting-rifle

or a shotgun."

I asked the same question when I cross-examined the ballistics witness.

"Is this the usual type of weapon used in your New Texas political

liquidations?"

"No, not at all. That's a very expensive weapon, Mr. Ambassador. Wasn't

even manufactured on this planet; made by the z'Srauff star-cluster. A

weapon like that sells for five, six hundred pesos. It's used for

shooting really big game--supermastodon, and things like that. And, of

course, for combat."

"It seems," I remarked, "that the defense is overlooking an obvious

point there. I doubt if these three defendants ever, in all their lives,

had among them the price of such a weapon."

That, of course, brought Sidney to his feet, sputtering objections to

this attempt to disparage the honest poverty of his clients, which only

helped to call attention to the point.

Then the prosecution called in a witness named David Crockett

Longfellow. I'd met him at the Hickock ranch; he was Hickock's butler.

He limped from an old injury which had retired him from work on the

range. He was sworn in and testified to his name and occupation.

"Do you know these three defendants?" Goodham asked him.

"Yeah. I even marked one of them for future identification," Longfellow

replied.

Sidney was up at once, shouting objections. After he was quieted down,

Goodham remarked that he'd come to that point later, and began a line of

questioning to establish that Longfellow had been on the Hickock ranch

on the day when Silas Cumshaw was killed.

"Now," Goodham said, "will you relate to the court the matters of

interest which came to your personal observation on that day."

Longfellow began his story. "At about 0900, I was dustin' up and

straightenin' things in the library while the Colonel was at his desk.

All of a sudden, he said to me, 'Davy, suppose you call the Solar

Embassy and see if Mr. Cumshaw is doin' anything today; if he isn't, ask

him if he wants to come out.' I was workin' right beside the

telescreen. So I called the Solar League Embassy. Mr. Thrombley took

the call, and I asked him was Mr. Cumshaw around. By this time, the

Colonel got through with what he was doin' at the desk and came over

to the screen. I went back to my work, but I heard the Colonel askin'

Mr. Cumshaw could he come out for the day, an' Mr. Cumshaw sayin',

yes, he could; he'd be out by about 1030.

"Well, 'long about 1030, his air-car came in and landed on the drive.

Little single-seat job that he drove himself. He landed it about a

hundred feet from the outside veranda, like he usually did, and got out.

"Then, this other car came droppin' in from outa nowhere. I didn't pay

it much attention; thought it might be one of the other Ambassadors that

Mr. Cumshaw'd brung along. But Mr. Cumshaw turned around and looked at

it, and then he started to run for the veranda. I was standin' in the

doorway when I seen him startin' to run. I jumped out on the porch,

quick-like, and pulled my gun, and then this auto-rifle begun firin'

outa the other car. There was only eight or ten shots fired from this

car, but most of them hit Mr. Cumshaw."

Goodham waited a few moments. Longfellow's voice had choked and there

was a twitching about his face, as though he were trying to suppress

tears.

"Now, Mr. Longfellow," Goodham said, "did you recognize the people who

were in the car from which the shots came?"

"Yeah. Like I said, I cut a mark on one of them. That one there:

Jack-High Abe Bonney. He was handlin' the gun, and from where I was, he

had his left side to me. I was tryin' for his head, but I always

overshoot, so I have the habit of holdin' low. This time I held too

low." He looked at Jack-High in coldly poisonous hatred. "I'll be sorry

about that as long as I live."

"And who else was in the car?"

"The other two curs outa the same litter: Switchblade an'

Turkey-Buzzard, over there."

Further questioning revealed that Longfellow had had no direct knowledge

of the pursuit, or the siege of the jail in Bonneyville. Colonel Hickock

had taken personal command of that, and had left Longfellow behind to

call the Solar League Embassy and the Rangers. He had made no attempt to

move the body, but had left it lying in the driveway until the doctor

and the Rangers arrived.

Goodham went to the middle table and picked up a heavy automatic pistol.

"I call the court's attention to this pistol. It is an eleven-mm

automatic, manufactured by the Colt Firearms Company of New Texas, a

licensed subsidiary of the Colt Firearms Company of Terra." He handed it

to Longfellow. "Do you know this pistol?" he asked.

Longfellow was almost insulted by the question. Of course he knew his

own pistol. He recited the serial number, and pointed to different scars

and scratches on the weapon, telling how they had been acquired.

"The court accepts that Mr. Longfellow knows his own weapon," Nelson

said. "I assume that this is the weapon with which you claim to have

shot Jack-High Abe Bonney?"

It was, although Longfellow resented the qualification.

"That's all. Your witness, Mr. Sidney," Goodham said.

Sidney began an immediate attack.

Questioning Longfellow's eyesight, intelligence, honesty and integrity,

he tried to show personal enmity toward the Bonneys. He implied that

Longfellow had been conspiring with Cumshaw to bring about the conquest

of New Texas by the Solar League. The verbal exchange became so heated

that both witness and attorney had to be admonished repeatedly from the

bench. But at no point did Sidney shake Longfellow from his one

fundamental statement, that the Bonney brothers had shot Silas Cumshaw

and that he had shot Jack-High Abe Bonney in the shoulder.

When he was finished, I got up and took over.

"Mr. Longfellow, you say that Mr. Thrombley answered the screen at the

Solar League Embassy," I began. "You know Mr. Thrombley?"

"Sure, Mr. Silk. He's been out at the ranch with Mr. Cumshaw a lotta

times."

"Well, beside yourself and Colonel Hickock and Mr. Cumshaw and,

possibly, Mr. Thrombley, who else knew that Mr. Cumshaw would be at the

ranch at 1030 on that morning?"

Nobody. But the aircar had obviously been waiting for Mr. Cumshaw; the

Bonneys must have had advance knowledge. My questions made that point

clear despite the obvious--and reluctantly court-sustained--objections

from Mr. Sidney.

"That will be all, Mr. Longfellow; thank you. Any questions from anybody

else?"

There being none, Longfellow stepped down. It was then a few minutes

before noon, so Judge Nelson recessed court for an hour and a half.

In the afternoon, the surgeon who had treated Jack-High Abe Bonney's

wounded shoulder testified, identifying the bullet which had been

extracted from Bonney's shoulder. A ballistics man from Ranger crime-lab

followed him to the stand and testified that it had been fired from

Longfellow's Colt. Then Ranger Captain Nelson took the stand. His

testimony was about what he had given me at the Embassy, with the

exception that the Bonneys' admission that they had shot Ambassador

Cumshaw was ruled out as having been made under duress.

However, Captain Nelson's testimony didn't need the confessions.

The cover was stripped off the air-car, and a couple of men with a

power-dolly dragged it out in front of the bench. The Ranger Captain

identified it as the car which he had found at the Bonneyville jail. He

went over it with an ultra-violet flashlight and showed where he had

written his name and the date on it with fluorescent ink. The effects of

AA-fire were plainly evident on it.

Then the other shrouded object was unveiled and identified as the gun

which had disabled the air-car. Colonel Hickock identified the gun as

the one with which he had fired on the air-car. Finally, the ballistics

expert was brought back to the stand again, to link the two by means of

fragments found in the car.

Then Goodham brought Kettle-Belly Sam Bonney to the stand.

The Mayor of Bonneyville was a man of fifty or so, short, partially

bald, dressed in faded blue Levis, a frayed white shirt, and a

grease-spotted vest. There was absolutely no mystery about how he had

acquired his nickname. He disgorged a cud of tobacco into a spittoon,

took the oath with unctuous solemnity, then reloaded himself with

another chew and told his version of the attack on the jail.

At about 1045 on the day in question, he testified, he had been in his

office, hard at work in the public service, when an air-car, partially

disabled by gunfire, had landed in the street outside and the three

defendants had rushed in, claiming sanctuary. From then on, the story

flowed along smoothly, following the lines predicted by Captain Nelson

and Parros. Of course he had given the fugitives shelter; they had

claimed to have been near to a political assassination and were in fear

of their lives.

Under Sidney's cross-examination, and coaching, he poured out the story

of Bonneyville's wrongs at the hands of the reactionary landowners, and

the atrocious behavior of the Hickock goon-gang. Finally, after

extracting the last drop of class-hatred venom out of him, Sidney turned

him over to me.

"How many men were inside the jail when the three defendants came

claiming sanctuary?" I asked.

He couldn't rightly say, maybe four or five.

"Closer twenty-five, according to the Rangers. How many of them were

prisoners in the jail?"

"Well, none. The prisoners was all turned out that mornin'. They was

just common drunks, disorderly conduct cases, that kinda thing. We

turned them out so's we could make some repairs."

"You turned them out because you expected to have to defend the jail;

because you knew in advance that these three would be along claiming

sanctuary, and that Colonel Hickock's ranch hands would be right on

their heels, didn't you?" I demanded.

It took a good five minutes before Sidney stopped shouting long enough

for Judge Nelson to sustain the objection.

"You knew these young men all their lives, I take it. What did you know

about their financial circumstances, for instance?"

"Well, they've been ground down an' kept poor by the big ranchers an'

the money-guys...."

"Then weren't you surprised to see them driving such an expensive

aircar?"

"I don't know as it's such an expensive--" he shut his mouth suddenly.

"You know where they got the money to buy that car?" I pressed.

Kettle-Belly Sam didn't answer.

"From the man who paid them to murder Ambassador Silas Cumshaw?" I kept

pressing. "Do you know how much they were paid for that job? Do you know

where the money came from? Do you know who the go-between was, and how

much he got, and how much he kept for himself? Was it the same source

that paid for the recent attempt on President Hutchinson's life?"

"I refuse to answer!" the witness declared, trying to shove his chest

out about half as far as his midriff. "On the grounds that it might

incriminate or degrade me!"

"You can't degrade a Bonney!" a voice from the balcony put in.

"So then," I replied to the voice, "what he means is, incriminate." I

turned to the witness. "That will be all. Excused."

As Bonney left the stand and was led out the side door, Goodham

addressed the bench.

"Now, Your Honor," he said, "I believe that the prosecution has

succeeded in definitely establishing that these three defendants

actually did fire the shot which, on April 22, 2193, deprived Silas

Cumshaw of his life. We will now undertake to prove...."

Followed a long succession of witnesses, each testifying to some public

or private act of philanthropy, some noble trait of character. It was

the sort of thing which the defense lawyer in the Whately case had been

so willing to stipulate. Sidney, of course, tried to make it all out to

be part of a sinister conspiracy to establish a Solar League fifth

column on New Texas. Finally, the prosecution rested its case.

I entertained Gail and her father at the Embassy, that evening. The

street outside was crowded with New Texans, all of them on our side,

shouting slogans like, "Death to the Bonneys!" and "Vengeance for

Cumshaw!" and "Annexation Now!" Some of it was entirely spontaneous,

too. The Hickocks, father and daughter, were given a tremendous ovation,

when they finally left, and followed to their hotel by cheering crowds.

I saw one big banner, lettered: 'DON'T LET NEW TEXAS GO TO THE DOGS.'

and bearing a crude picture of a z'Srauff. I seemed to recall having

seen a couple of our Marines making that banner the evening before in

the Embassy patio, but....