True Grit - Charles Portis [12]
When I got in the courtroom there was a Creek Indian boy on the witness stand and he was speaking in his own tongue and another Indian was interpreting for him. It was slow going. I stood there through almost an hour of it before they called Rooster Cogburn to the stand.
I had guessed wrong as to which one he was, picking out a younger and slighter man with a badge on his shirt, and I was surprised when an old one-eyed jasper that was built along the lines of Grover Cleveland went up and was sworn. I say “old.” He was about forty years of age. The floor boards squeaked under his weight. He was wearing a dusty black suit of clothes and when he sat down I saw that his badge was on his vest. It was a little silver circle with a star in it. He had a mustache like Cleveland too.
Some people will say, well there were more men in the country at that time who looked like Cleveland than did not. Still, that is how he looked. Cleveland was once a sheriff himself. He brought a good deal of misery to the land in the Panic of ‘93 but I am not ashamed to own that my family supported him and has stayed with the Democrats right on through, up to and including Governor Alfred Smith, and not only because of Joe Robinson. Papa used to say that the only friends we had down here right after the war were the Irish Democrats in New York. Thad Stevens and the Republican gang would have starved us all out if they could. It is all in the history books. Now I will introduce Rooster by way of the transcript and get my story “back on the rails.”
MR. BARLOW: State your name and occupation please.
MR. COGBURN: Reuben J. Cogburn. I am a deputy marshal for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas having criminal jurisdiction over the Indian Territory.
MR. BARLOW: How long have you occupied such office?
MR. COGBURN: Be four years in March.
MR. BARLOW: On November second were you carrying out your official duties?
MR. COGBURN: I was, yes sir.
MR. BARLOW: Did something occur on that day out of the ordinary?
MR. COGBURN: Yes sir.
MR. BARLOW: Please describe in your own words what that occurrence was.
MR. COGBURN: Yes sir. Well, not long after dinner on that day we was headed back for Fort Smith from the Creek Nation and was about four miles west of Webbers Falls.
MR. BARLOW: One moment. Who was with you?
MR. COGBURN: There was four other deputy marshals and me. We had a wagonload of prisoners and was headed back for Fort Smith. Seven prisoners. About four miles west of Webbers Falls that Creek boy named Will come riding up in a lather. He had news. He said that morning he was taking some eggs over to Tom Spotted-Gourd and his wife at their place on the Canadian River. When he got there he found the woman out in the yard with the back of her head shot off and the old man inside on the floor with a shotgun wound in his breast. MR. GOUDY: An objection.
JUDGE PARKER: Confine your testimony to what you saw, Mr. Cogburn.
MR. COGBURN: Yes sir. Well, Deputy Marshal Potter and me rode on down to Spotted-Gourd’s place, with the wagon to come on behind us. Deputy Marshal Schmidt stayed with the wagon. When we got to the place we found everything as the boy Will had represented. The woman was out in the yard dead with blowflies on her head and the old man was inside with his breast blowed open by a scatter-gun and his feet burned. He was still alive but he just was. Wind was whistling in and out of the bloody hole. He said about four o’clock that morning them two Wharton boys had rode up there drunk—
MR. GOUDY: An objection.
MR. BARLOW: This is a dying declaration, your honor.
JUDGE PARKER: Overruled. Proceed, Mr. Cogburn.
MR. COGBURN: He said them two Wharton boys, Odus and C. C. by name, had