Chapter III. What a Man's Good Name is Worth

You would think that the bare word of a man who has lived uprightly in a community for fifteen years or so would be believed under oath, even if his whole future did depend upon it. You would think that Aleck Douglas could not be convicted of murder just because he had reported that a man was shot down in Aleck's house.

The report of Aleck Douglas' trial is not the main feature of this story; it is merely the commencement, one might say. Therefore, I am going to be brief as I can and still give you a clear idea of the situation, and then I am going to skip the next three years and begin where the real story begins.

Aleck's position was dishearteningly simple, and there was nothing much that one could do to soften the facts or throw a new light on the murder. Lite watched, wide awake and eager, many a night for the return of that prowler, but he never saw or heard a thing that gave him any clue whatever. So the footprints seemed likely to remain the mystery they had seemed on the morning when he discovered them. He laid traps, pretending to ride away from the ranch to town before dark, and returning cautiously by way of the trail down the bluff behind the house. But nothing came of it. Lazy A ranch was keeping its secret well, and by the time the trial was begun, Lite had given up hope. Once he believed the house had been visited in the daytime, during his absence in town, but he could not be sure of that.

Jean went to Chinook and stayed there, so that Lite saw her seldom. Carl also was away much of the time, trying by every means he could think of to swing public opinion and the evidence in Aleck's favor. He prevailed upon Rossman, who was Montana's best-known lawyer, to defend the case, for one thing. He seemed to pin his faith almost wholly upon Rossman, and declared to every one that Aleck would never be convicted. It would be, he maintained, impossible to convict him, with Rossman handling the case; and he always added the statement that you can't send an innocent man to jail, if things are handled right.

Perhaps he did not, after all, handle things right. For in spite of Rossman, and Aleck's splendid reputation, and the meager evidence against him, he was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in Deer Lodge penitentiary.

Rossman had made a great speech, and had made men in the jury blink back unshed tears. But he could not shake from them the belief that Aleck Douglas had ridden home and met Johnny Croft, calmly making himself at home in the Lazy A kitchen. He could not convince them that there had not been a quarrel, and that Aleck had not fired the shot in the grip of a sudden, overwhelming rage against Croft. By Aleck's own statement he had been at the ranch some time before he had started for town to report the murder. By the word of several witnesses, it had been proven that Croft had left town meaning to collect wages which he claimed were due him or else he