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 with curious surprise. "This is all part of the record; the clerk has it down in black and white."

"But I want to say that Charley Burnett told me, on the hotel porch not five minutes after they carried Major Cottrell to the hotel, that Sandiver had made a break to get away, and somebody had killed him. I don't want the doubtful honor—"

"I didn't tell you any such a damn thing!" Burnett denied, crowding forward, red to the ears with ill-held anger.

"Repress your language, Mr. Burnett," the coroner blandly advised.

"No man can charge a thing like that up to me and walk off with it!" Burnett declared.

"There's no attempt nor intention of laying a charge," Hall replied, undisturbed by the cattleman's bluster. "I'm just stating a fact that I ought to be able to prove by witnesses."

"You ought to be able to prove anything you say about me, stranger, and be damn sure you can prove it before you begin to talk," Burnett said.

"But from the trend of public determination, as I'll have to call it for lack of any other word, to shift the blame for this man's death from the hands responsible for it, I hardly think it would be any use to call Kraus and Fergus, and the witness who gave his name as Larrimore, back to the stand to substantiate what I've said. They were there on the hotel porch, not six feet from Mr. Burnett, when he told me Sandiver had made a break to get away."

"But I didn't tell you anybody killed him," Burnett said, with sneering triumph that won him a laugh.