Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/172

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tention and a laughing-stock of him. The fat, pasty-faced, wily-eyed attorney, opposed and confronted by the man who had saved his life, fretted and fumed and blustered. He based the Salzberg title on a deed purporting to be signed by certain purported chiefs of the Salisheuttes as trustces, conveying all right, title and interest, etc., in the said described lands to Julius Hornblower. This deed Julius now ostentatiously offered in evidence, after having a few days previously offered it for record at the courthouse.

Henry held this deed up to ridicule. He read the names of its signers, Chief Left-Hand, Chief Charlie White, Chief Jim McDonald, Chief White Seal, calling each name loudly, demanding that these chiefs be subpenaed and that the subpenas be served; and when the sheriff could not find them Henry had the court bailiff page them loudly in the corridors. When these vociferous bawlings sounded from without, each empty echo a witness to the emptiness of Hornblower's case, the spectators tittered, the jury smiled and venerable Judge Allen with difficulty kept his mask of solemn dignity. The jury found for the defendant without leaving its box.

"We didn't have a chance—not a chance in this court," muttered Hornblower sullenly. "But we'll take it, by God, to where we do have a chance. We'll appeal!"

"Naturally," smiled Henry.

It was this victory in the court which raised the public clamor for Henry to represent the seventy-first assembly district in the legislature to a chorus which could hardly be denied. Yet Henry did deny it—until one morning Billie came into his office—came as