A MURDER TRIAL IN NEVADA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 138, 29 September 1870, Page 6

A MURDER TRIAL IN NEVADA.

(From the " G ilaxy.")

" I was sitting here," said the judge, "in this old pulpit, holding court, and we were trying a big, wicked. looking Spanish desperado, for killing the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican woman. It was a lazy summer day, and an awfully long one, and the witnesses were tedious. None of us took any interest in the trial except that uneasy devil of a woman — because yon know how they love and how they hate,

and this cue bad loved her hu3band with all her might, and now she hid

boiled it down into hate, and stood here spitting at that Spaniard with eyes ; and I tell you she would stir me up, too, with a little of her summer lightning occasionally. Well, I had my coat off" and my heels up, lolling and sweating, and smoking one of the cabbage cigars the San Francisco people used to think were good enough for us in those times ; and the lawyers they all had their coats off, anil were smoking ami whittling, and the witnesses tb.3 same, and so was the prisoner. Well, the fdet is, there wasn't any interest) in a murder trial than, becaus" the fellow was always brought in not guilty, the jury expectng him to do as much for them some time ; and although the evidence was straight and square against the Spaniard, we knew we could not convict Mm without seeming to be rather high-handed and sort of reflecting on every gentleman in tho commuity ; for the.re warn't any carriages and liveries then, and so the only "style" there was, to keap your private graveyard. But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that Sp miard ; and you ought to have seen how she would glare on him a minute, aad then, look up at me in her pleidinjj way, an I then turn, and for the next ri va minutea search the jury's faces — .uul by and by drop her face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ra:«lv ty

give up, but out she'J come again d ; rectly and he as lively and anxious as ever. But when tne jury announce 1 the verdict, '• not guiUy," and I told the prisoner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman ros« up till she appeared to be as tall and as grand as a seventy-four gun ship, and says she: "'Judge, do 1 understand you to say that this man is not guilty that murdered my husband without a causo before my own eyes and my little children's and that all has been done to him that ever justice and the law can do? " ' The same,' says I. " And then what do you reckon she did? Why, siio turned on that smirking Spanish fool like a wild cat, and out with a ' navy,' and shot him dead in the open court !" " That was spirited, I am willing to admit." " Wasn't it, though !" s lid the Judge, admiringly. " I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I adjourned court right on the spot, and we put on our coats and went out and took up a collection for her and her cubs, and sent them over the mountains to their friends. Ah, she was a spirited wench. !"