They were scarcely a physical addition to Stacy's party, whatever might have been their moral and legal support.
But it was just this support that Steptoe strangely clung to in his designs for the future, and a wild idea seized him.

The surveyor was really the only disinterested witness between the two parties.

If Steptoe could confuse his mind before the actual fighting--from which he would, of course, escape as a non-combatant--it would go far afterwards to rehabilitate Steptoe's party.

"Very well, then," he said to Marshall, "I shall call this gentleman to witness that we have been attacked here in peaceable possession of our part of the claim by these armed strangers, and whether they are acting on your order or not, their blood will be on your head." "Then I reckon," said the surveyor, as he tore away his beard, wig, spectacles, and mustache, and revealed the figure of Jack Hamlin, "that I'm about the last witness that Mr.Steptoe-Horncastle ought to call, and about the last witness that he ever WILL call!" But he had not calculated upon the desperation of Steptoe over the failure of this last hope.

For there sprang up in the outlaw's brain the same hideous idea that he voiced to his companions at the Divide.