Doctors Smith and Camp, with their hired helpers, dug up Pat's body during the storm. |
Ten o'clock saw Doc Smith dressed in rubber helmet, coat and boots,
carrying a lantern, pick and shovel through driving sleet and rain.
With like equipment and similarly clothed, followed along in the
squashy black mud track of their leader, the Mayor, Sheriff Wagness and
Prosecutor McKee. They stopped at the sunken grave of Pat McWeeney,
where with the help of the two hired hands who had preceded them to the
spot, they began to dig soaked and still partly frozen earth from the
extra-size grave. It was a ghoulish job and required two hours to
finish it. The casket was opened and the autopsy reenacted by the light
of the dim oil lanterns; it was a rude and crude operation in the light
of present-day hospital surgery, but this was frontier in frontier
times. The hired "hands" were instructed to restore the burial site to
its former condition and the official party returned with their
"evidence" in time to get a little sleep before court opened at nine
o'clock. The court was crowded to suffocation as the judge directed the
prosecutor to proceed. Again there were Indians present, and, on the
outside, carts and knots of curious people. They talked in low tones
and with heads close together; they were armed in a way not always
apparent and their furtive glances toward the rear door of the big
machinery hail suggested to the observer that something extraordinary
was being discussed. One of the men had a coil of rope swung about his
shoulder. Size and length showed its use to be other than a mere
lariat. During the night word had leaked out to the crowd that the jury
was sure to disagree, that, at best, the verdict would be manslaughter,
and that the judge would render a light sentence. The plaintiff's case
was in peril. McKee was nervous and apprehensive of the possible
result, yet when he rose to deliver his last argument, before the jury
was to retire, he gradually regained his courage and rendered a most
effective and masterful oration ending with a crushing rebuke to his
noted opponent. He said: "My friend, the opposing counsel and a most
distinguished and able advocate, has discredited his profession and
chosen to play the clown; he has beclouded the true facts in the case
by practicing the arts of the hypnotist and the magician; he has
concluded his show by staging a scene well calculated to confuse the
wits and win the sympathy of an over-taxed jury. How absurd it is for
the learned lawyer to say that Pat McWeeney was killed by an attack of
heart failure, when all the evidence shows that he was shot through the
heart by the prisoner at the bar. It is for you, gentlemen of the jury,
to judge for yourselves." Reaching for and withdrawing from under the
seat of the mayor a rusty pan he continued, "I here offer for your
observation the punctured heart of Pat McWeeney--examine it carefully!"
"Beside this gruesome relic of the departed lies the bullet which took
the life of our old friend; blood still stains it-- the heart blood of
Pat McWeeney; already it has been fitted to the barrel of the
murderer's death-dealing weapon; try it and be convinced." |
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