“I shall ride away with Lassiter. Judkins, tell me all you saw—all you know about this killing.” She realized, without wonder or amaze, how Judkins’s one word, affirming the death of Dyer—that the catastrophe had fallen—had completed the change whereby she had been molded or beaten or broken into another woman. She felt calm, slightly cold, strong as she had not been strong since the first shadow fell upon her. “I jest saw about all of it, Miss Withersteen, an’ I’ll be glad to tell you if you’ll only hev patience with me,” said Judkins, earnestly. “You see, I’ve been pecooliarly interested, an’ nat’rully I’m some excited. An’ I talk a lot thet mebbe ain’t necessary, but I can’t help thet. “I was at the meetin’-house where Dyer was holdin’ court. You know he allus acts as magistrate an’ judge when Tull’s away. An’ the trial was fer tryin’ what’s left of my boy riders—thet helped me hold your cattle—fer a lot of hatched-up things the boys never did. We’re used to thet, an’ the boys wouldn’t hev minded bein’ locked up fer a while, or hevin’ to dig ditches, or whatever the judge laid down. You see, I divided the gold you give me among all my boys, an’ they all hid it, en’ they all feel rich. Howsomever, court was adjourned before the judge passed sentence. Yes, ma’m, court was adjourned some strange an’ quick, much as if lightnin’ hed struck the meetin’-house. “I hed trouble attendin’ the trial, but I got in. There was a good many people there, all my boys, an’ Judge Dyer with his several clerks. Also he hed with him the five riders who’ve been guardin’ him pretty close of late. They was Carter, Wright, Jengessen, an’ two new riders from Stone Bridge. I didn’t hear their names, but I heard they was handy men with guns an’ they looked more like rustlers than riders. Anyway, there they was, the five all in a row. “Judge Dyer was tellin’ Willie Kern, one of my best an’ steadiest boys—Dyer was tellin’ him how there was a ditch opened near Willie’s home lettin’ water through his lot, where it hadn’t ought to go. An’ Willie was tryin’ to git a word in to prove he wasn’t at home all the day it happened—which was true, as I know—but Willie couldn’t git a word in, an’ then Judge Dyer went on layin’ down the law. An’ all to onct he happened to look down the long room. An’ if ever any man turned to stone he was thet man.