Removing his hat, the young foreman came into the room.
“Something I can do for you, Pearlie?” Smoke asked, looking up from the stereoscope he was holding in his hands.
“Yes, sir, I reckon there is, if you are of a mind to allow it, that is.”
Smoke put the instrument down. “Allow it? What is it I am to allow?”
“Me and Cal have been thinkin',” Pearlie started.
Smoke chuckled. “Now that is something I would like to have seen. Imagine, you and Cal both thinking at the same time.”
“Smoke, don’t tease so,” Sally scolded.
Smoke laughed. “All right, I’m sorry. But it did seem like a funny thought to me.”
Pearlie chuckled as well. “Yes, sir, well I admit that thinkin’ ain’t somethin’ me an’ Cal do all that well. But thinkin’ is what we was doin’ all right, and what we’d like to do is ride off to Denver and see if me an’ him couldn’t ride in that there rodeo they are a’ holdin'. We could win us some money.”
“Are you saying I don’t pay you two enough?”
“No, no!” Pearlie said quickly. “We don’t mean nothin’ like that. It’s just that, well, sir, me an’ Cal is both pretty good riders an’ we would just love to prove it, is all.”
“Smoke, stop teasing them so. You knew they were planning this. I told you all about it.”
“I know,” Smoke said. “I was just having a little fun is all. I’m sorry, Pearlie, of course you and Cal can go. When are you leaving?”
“The rodeo is a couple of weeks from now. We figure on leavin’ about Monday of the week of the rodeo. That is, iffen you don’t mind.”
“What do you think, Sally?”
“I have no problem with them going,” Sally said. “But his grammar?” She screwed up her face. “It is positively atrocious.”
“Now who is teasing him?” Smoke asked.
“I’m not teasing, I am teaching.”
“You plan on being a teacher forever, do you?” Smoke asked. “You gave up that job a long time ago.”
“Teaching isn’t a job,” Sally replied. “It is a never-ending commitment. Yes, I will continue to teach for as long as I live.”
Getting up from the table where he had been looking at the three-dimensional pictures, Smoke walked over to Sally, then leaned down to kiss her on the forehead.
“And I will continue to learn as long as you are willing to teach,” he said.
“Me too,” Pearlie added.
Sally laughed. “Pearlie, you are—a challenge,” she said.
Three days after Bobby Lee was brought into Cloverdale under guard, his trial got under way when Judge Briggs came through town as part of his circuit. Briggs arrived in a carriage that was driven by a black man who was also his bodyguard. His Honor, Judge Jeremiah J. Briggs, was a tall, thin—some might even describe him as cadaverous—man. He had a sallow complexion, sunken cheeks, deep-set eyes that were so brown that there was little delineation between iris and pupil, dark, bushy eyebrows, and dark hair. He wore a black suit with a burgundy vest and matching cravat. Because there were only two lawyers in town, Briggs appointed one as the prosecutor and the other as defense counsel. Arriving at ten in the morning, Judge Briggs gave the lawyers, both for the prosecution and the defense, until two o’clock that afternoon to prepare their case.
“I expect to have this case tried and adjudicated before supper,” he said. “Do you think we can do that?”
Ray Roswell, who had been appointed as the prosecutor, nodded confidently. “Your Honor, I have an entire trainload of passengers who were witnesses to the murder. I expect this to be a quick and easy trial.”
“Mr. Reid, will you have time to prepare you case by two o’clock?” Judge Briggs asked the defense counsel.
“Easily, Your Honor,” Reid said. “There is little to prepare for. Unfortunately for me, it seems to be an open- and-shut case against my client.”
“Very well, court will convene at two o’clock sharp,” Judge Briggs said.
Reid went directly from the meeting in the judge’s hotel room to the jail, where he asked to speak with the prisoner.
“He’s back there,” Deputy Harley Beard said.
Bobby Lee was lying on the bunk with his hands laced behind his head when the door from the sheriff’s office opened and a fat man with a florid face and thin, blond hair stepped into the back. He was sweating profusely, and he held a sweat-soaked handkerchief in his hand.
“Bobby Lee Campbell?” he asked.
“Cabot.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Bobby Lee Cabot,” Bobby Lee said. “That’s my name.”
The fat man pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and looked at it, his lips moving as he read the print.
“Yes, Cabot,” he said. “That’s you?”
