Page:06-24-1920 -The Story of the Jones County Calf Case.pdf/16

 He was as tall and straight as a lance. He had long tawny hair. (People wore their hair long in those days.) He had a full tawny beard. He had smiling grey eyes. His hair and his beard made Bob look like a lion, and that is what he was. He was one of those rare men whose courage mounts and grows, and mounts with adversity, and during all those years that the trial judges were setting aside our verdicts, and the supreme court was setting aside our judgments, during all of those years old bob was just the same. He never weakened, never gave up. As I have said, he would say, "That's all right, Charley; that's all right, I am going to have my character back," and he got it. And now, after nearly half a century, when I look backward and see a lot of shadowy forms that were once my clients, towering head and shoulders above the shadowy forms stands one. His name is Bob Johnson. Bob Johnson, whose own lawyers could not make him jump his bond and run away. I see him now as I saw him when I was a boy. He was one of my very first clients. I believe in him now as I believed in him then.

You are all lawyers. There is some mystery connected with the Jones County Calf Case. Let me ask you some questions, and you chew it over when you are at leisure. Who was the man, Smith? The other side always claimed there wasn't any Smith; that he was a mythical Smith, and that Bob lied when he said he bought the four dark colored calves of Smith. They claimed that Lane never had any such son-in-law, and that it was a put-up job by Bob after he got into trouble to claim that he got the calves of Smith, and they always referred to him as "the shadowy Smith". And before I leave that question I want to say to you that the evidence disclosed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that there was a Smith; that he was unquestionably present in Coppes & Derr's store that day that he sold these calves to Bob Johnson. Bob searched the earth for him, but he could not find him, and so our enemies always referred to him as "the mythical Smith".

Another question, gentlemen: It is sure John Foreman's calves, light colored calves, were stolen. That is sure. We admitted that. Who stole them? Not Bob Johnson. Not Smith.