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 aircar, 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 ultraviolet flashlight and showed where he had written his name and the date on it with fluorescent ink. The effects of A.A.-fire were plainly evident on it.
Then the other shrouded object was unveiled and identified as the gun which had disabled the aircar. Colonel Hickock identified the gun as the one with which he had fired on the aircar. 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 aircar, 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
