Buck's account was slow, halting at times, but seemingly faultless. Cody was surprised to hear him admit to being thrown by a horse early in his run. It was something that happened to all Riders sooner or later, but any one of them would've preferred getting his hair set on fire than having to say as much out loud, never mind in front of so many people. But then he realized Buck was maybe a little bit smarter than he was, at least when it came to laying aside pride in favor of survival.
Getting thrown from that horse, which had then galloped herself to a station, had led directly into a witness. It was a detail Teaspoon latched onto and brought back around to question Buck after he'd finished the uninterrupted version of the story. That was when Cody realized why Buck had been wise enough to keep in that embarrassing little detail of the run.
"So you were met on the way to the station by this boy, Billy," Teaspoon said. "Could you repeat, for the benefit of my aging memory, what it was he told you?"
Buck sort of tilted his head, knowing as well as any Rider that Teaspoon's memory was perfectly good. He'd already told the court what Billy had said during his original account, and didn't really see why Teaspoon wanted him to say it again. But he dutifully complied with the request.
"He said the station keeper was in town, helping to put out a fire at his father's place."
"And that father, he Amos Glassner?" Teaspoon asked.
"Billy didn't say," Buck answered after a faltering moment. "Just that his father owned the livery, and Mr. Hank was in town trying to help put out the fire." He dropped his gaze briefly, fooling with the hat between his hands, then looked back at Teaspoon. "Said everybody thought it was an Indian that set the fire."
"Now why would he go and tell you a thing like that?" Teaspoon asked.
Buck's eyes flashed, but he said, "I don't follow."
"Why would he tell you it was Indians, considering..." Teaspoon paused, clearly having meant something else entirely before he concluded, "...You and he were out there alone?"
"Objection," Charlie interrupted while anger flared in Buck's eyes. "Relevance?"
"Mr. Hunter, do you have a point?" Mayor Trenton suggested patiently.
Teaspoon waved a placating hand. "Yes, your honor, I'm getting to it." He turned back to Buck, whose anger had given way to uncertainty and confusion. "Go on, Buck. How come he'd ride right up to you and tell you that an Indian set fire to his pa's place? Just you and him, out in the middle of nowhere, nobody else around for miles maybe."
"I thought we weren't supposed to speculate," Buck reminded Teaspoon cautiously.
"Humor me," Teaspoon persisted.
"He didn't know what I was," Buck said finally, which caused a murmur in the gallery, most of whom thought the claim to be completely absurd.
"Is that speculation?" Teaspoon asked.
"No," Buck said, almost seeming surprised to realize that. "No, I told him I was Kiowa. He was surprised," Buck looked down again, but this time it didn't seem to be nerves as he raised the hand holding his hat slightly. "He asked about my hat."
"About your hat?" Teaspoon repeated. "What about your hat?"
"He asked why I was wearing it if I was Kiowa. I told him it was my hat."
"So he asked about your hat. Anything else?"
Buck furrowed his brow a bit, like he was trying to recall, then shook his head slightly. "No." Then he straightened slightly. "Actually, yeah. He asked what I was doing with the mail."
"And?" Teaspoon prompted when Buck didn't elaborate.
"I told him I was an express rider," Buck said. "So he got off the pony he'd brought and gave it to me. I continued my run. I guess he must have gone back to the station."
"So he asked what a Kiowa was doing with a hat like yours..." Teaspoon mused, scratching his whiskers thoughtfully. "But he didn't ask what an express rider was doing with moccasins or arrows?"
Buck bristled visibly and snapped. "Of course not! I didn't have anything like that with me."
"Oh, I suppose you was goin' around the countryside barefoot and unarmed?" Teaspoon asked.
"Don't be ridiculous. I had boots and a revolver just like always. Just like I left with," Buck told him. "You can ask Kid or Lou if you don't believe me."
"I never said that," Teaspoon said flatly, but made no greater move to smooth Buck's temper. He couldn't right now, he had to stay on task, turning to the rest of the room. "So, according to witness testimony, the barn burner was identified as an Indian by an arrow and certain tracks he left. Tracks and an arrow that Buck couldn't possibly have left."
"That doesn't prove a damn thing!" it was Lee, of course, leaping to his feet and jabbing an accusatory finger in Buck's direction. "Billy's not here to ask and, even if he was, he's just a boy. The only other witnesses he claims could prove what he says aren't here, either, and by his own admission haven't seen him since he left Sweetwater. He could've picked up the bow and arrow and changed shoes any time he wanted to."
"What for?" Jimmy erupted now, matching Lee's temper as he too stood up. "He says he was carrying a gun and wearing boots, and that's what he was found with when you caught up with him. Why would he go and change gear just to burn a barn!?"
Whatever Lee's answer might've been was drowned out by the rest of the gallery starting to shout various questions and explanations and theories of their own as the courtroom swirled into chaos that even the judge's ersatz gavel and the saloon matron's promise of whiskey couldn't quickly silence.
Buck sat frozen where he was, staring, waiting with bated breath to see if things would settle down or if the furor would work itself into a lynching frenzy. Teaspoon was more pragmatic, leisurely leaning against the judge's table and watching the rest of the courtroom try to tear itself to pieces.
He might have preferred Jimmy keep his temper, but it was fairly obvious, at least to Cody, that this was the result he'd expected, maybe even the one he'd wanted. It made a hideous kind of sense now Cody'd started thinking on it. Teaspoon hadn't questioned Buck to provoke him, but to provoke everybody else. Not into a fight, which is what they were boiling up to now, but into thinking.
It was the first real challenge that had been posed to the story as it had already been told, and that opening volley sure packed a heckuva wallop. As Lee had said, it wasn't proof by any stretch, but it certainly introduced a mighty fine dose of reasonable doubt. All the more so because, if Buck had done as Lee suggested, it meant he'd purposely implicated his own people in the crime. Somebody would have to really go for a stretch to figure out why he'd do something like that.
Looking at Teaspoon, so calmly observing the chaos, Cody felt certain that he must have more things like that up his sleeve. It hadn't even crossed Cody's mind until now that Teaspoon didn't have to prove Buck's innocence. All he really had to do was introduce enough reasonable doubt that the jury was unwilling that Buck should hang. Given the fight that had broken out just at the first little hole Teaspoon had poked in the story, he'd already made a good start. Cody looked to the jury, but the twelve women were fussing with their hair and bonnets, pretending not to see the uncouth behavior before them, and he couldn't guess whether or not Teaspoon had moved them.
Then Cody's hopes took a bit of a dive. True, the law said a man was innocent until proven guilty, and true that was supposed to apply to everybody. But… well… so was Christmas, just like Ike had said. Cody's offense against Buck was harmless by comparison, but he didn't like how it felt like it might just come from the same place. He didn't like what that said about him, but even more he didn't like what that said about Buck's chances. At least Cody was supposed to be his friend, and had the best of intentions to begin with. But the people here in Ditchford…
Buck was tired. Tired and hurting. But he wasn't going to let them accuse him of trying to delay the trial because he knew he was going to lose and was looking to prolong his life by an extra day. Teaspoon seemed to understand and be of like mind, pretending not to notice Buck's increasingly faltering and delayed responses as he tried to answer Teaspoon's questions.
Teaspoon caused another small riot when he had Buck tell a bit more about Ellis. Teaspoon, being Teaspoon, had undoubtedly heard about Mr. Ellis' daughter and his more erratic behavior, even though the Riders had kept it to themselves in the hopes the man would eventually learn to function again even through his grief. But Teaspoon wasn't looking to tell what he'd heard second or third or even fourth hand. He instead turned to Buck, who'd interacted with Mr. Ellis directly, though he had first asked the judge if he wanted to hear it from another Rider, since Jimmy and Cody would know the same things as Buck was about to say. The judge and Charlie Harlow waved aside the consideration, and let Buck tell it like he knew it. At Teaspoon's prodding, Buck talked about the erratic behavior, and the news that had changed Ellis from a conscientious worker to near-absence. When further prodded by Teaspoon, Buck went into as little detail as Teaspoon let him get away with about how he'd found Ellis.
"Since I have a feeling Mr. Harlow is going to ask about it, I'll go ahead and save him the time and trouble," Teaspoon said. "You found Mr. Ellis dead near the creek, right?"
Buck nodded, looking at Teaspoon watchfully, trying to guess his intent, but also trying to keep focused and to not think about the other people in the room all looking at him… judging his every word and action, both the ones now and the ones he was describing to them.
"How come you didn't bury him?" Teaspoon asked.
"I didn't have the time or tools," Buck replied.
"You didn't have time for the decent thing?" Teaspoon pressed.
Shifting uncomfortably, Buck tried not to let it get to him. Teaspoon seemed to know what he was doing, but Buck was having a hard time following it. He also still didn't see how it made a difference, but Jimmy's last words to him still rang in his ears, hounding him to speech even though he would have preferred to save himself the energy. He'd been burning mad at Jimmy right after, but anger cost energy, energy Buck didn't have and, once it had burned itself out, he'd had to face the most unpleasant of all realities, which was that Jimmy had been dead-on right.
And that meant there was a point to telling this story, letting himself be questioned, answering as best he could, even if it didn't make any difference as to whether he lived or died by the end of it. He had something to prove, if only to Jimmy and himself, that he was better than he'd been acting when he and Jimmy were talking, that he was better than Jimmy had accused him of. Even if Jimmy was wrong about the people in this town, and nobody else in the room was, Buck had to be.
"Run was marked urgent," Buck said. "That means don't stop for anything and push every horse hard as you can without killin' it. Burying takes time."
"Yeah, it does," Teaspoon mused with an almost sleepy nod. "But you did stop later. In fact, you not only stopped, you went completely off course to a town that wasn't on your route."
"Yes," Buck agreed with the fact as stated, and refrained from trying to justify himself.
"You said you saw somebody on the ground, and you stopped. You tried to revive him and, failing at that, you went to town for help before riding on. That about right?"
Buck nodded again, tensing in anticipation of some sort of rebuke or criticism that he suspected was forthcoming. But Teaspoon instead strolled away for a minute before coming back.
"Now, we know this part is true, because the fella you talked to is here today, and he's already testified that he didn't believe your story, but you paid him so he decided to at least ride out to the gully to check it out." Teaspoon paused again. "So you chose to deviate from your established route," Teaspoon said, rather intentionally emphasizing those two-dollar words. He paused for Buck's nod, then went on, "Despite having an urgent, maybe life-and-death making mail delivery to make."
Almost feeling ashamed with Teaspoon's putting it like that, Buck confirmed. "Yes."
"Now… why would you do that, when you just told us all here in this room you didn't have time even for burying Mr. Ellis?"
"Objection," Charlie interrupted once again, on the same grounds as before. "Relevance?"
Mayor Trenton seemed to think about this one a little harder than the last one. Why Buck had done as he did couldn't have much to do with it, especially since Buck was claiming a story here that was in dispute, but Teaspoon had made a satisfactory point last time he'd been given leeway to do so.
"That's okay," Teaspoon said, raising a hand. "I was just wondering what reasoning somebody would have to be using to murder a man without taking the time to hide the evidence by burying him, and then steal from another without killing him and not only stop by a town, but pay somebody to go find that man."
"You're asking for reason?" Charlie scoffed, pointing at Buck coldly as he added. "From an animal like that?"
It wasn't the first time Charlie had showed his colors in this room, but it was the first time anyone had really seen fit to notice. The shift in the room's atmosphere was palpable and murmuring broke out. Nobody had been bothered before, but now they had seen Buck, heard him speak, and Teaspoon had been pricking holes in their preconceived notions about the case here and there, and not everyone was happy anymore to sit back and quietly listen to such talk anymore.
Buck didn't notice this, because he was too busy biting back, his temper finally having reached its limit for endurance. "You're one to talk about animals, given what happened between here and Kearney."
"What happened between here and Kearney has nothing to do with this case," Charlie Harlow snapped, raising his voice as he rose to his feet to be seen and heard above the rising noise of the rest of the courtroom starting to fight with itself.
"Doesn't it?" Buck demanded angrily. "It seems everyone's concerned about my character, what I've done, why I did it, but nobody's asking about you or the Glassner brothers."
"We're not the ones on trial here," Charlie growled, striding towards Buck.
"No, but maybe you should be," Buck retorted.
Charlie towered over Buck sitting in the chair and raised his hand as if to strike. Buck merely inclined his head to glare defiance, but the expected blow never came. Maybe Charlie realized how close Teaspoon was getting to intervening. Maybe he realized that he could be removed from his position in this joke of a courtroom if he struck the handcuffed and defenseless Buck in front of everybody. Or maybe, just maybe, he'd started to see a bit of light, and realized Buck was right.
Yeah. Right. Fat chance of that.
"Order!" the judge cried, banging his spoon frantically. "I will have order in my courtroom!"
But he would not have order, and eventually the only way to calm everybody down was to call an overnight recess, so that cooler heads might prevail in the morning.