Tracy told of having been secretary of the I. W. W. in Everett for a short time, that being the only official position he had ever held in the organization. He explained his position on the boat at the time it docked, stating that the first shot apparently came from the dock and struck close to where he was sitting. Immediately the boat listed and threw him away from the window, after which he sought a place of safety behind the smokestack. He denied having been in any way a party to a conspiracy to commit an act of violence, or to kill anyone.
"You are charged here, Mr. Tracy," said Vanderveer, "with having aided and abetted an unknown man in killing Jefferson Beard. Are you guilty or not guilty?"
"I am not guilty," replied Tracy without a trace of emotion.
The cross-questioning of the defendant in this momentous case was conducted by citizen-deputy Cooley. His questions to the man whom he and his fellow conspirators on the dock had not succeeded in murdering were of the most trivial nature, clearly proving that arch-sleuth McLaren had been unable to discover or to manufacture anything that would make Tracy's record other than that of a plain, unassuming, migratory worker.
"Never voted in your life?" queried Cooley.
"No!" replied the defendant who for the time represented the entire migratory class. "I was never in one place long enough!"
Then, acting on the class theory that it is an honor to be a "globe-trotter" but a disgrace to be a "blanket-stiff," the prosecutor brought out Tracy's travels in minute detail. This examination of the railroad construction worker brought home to the listeners the truth of the little verse:
"He built the road; With others of his class he built the road; Now o'er its weary length he packs his load, Chasing a Job, spurred on by Hunger's goad, He walks and walks and walks and walks, And wonders why in Hell he built the road!"
Then there hobbled into the court room on crutches a stripling with an empty trouser leg, his face drawn with suffering, and who was able to get into the witness chair only by obviously painful efforts with the assistance of Vanderveer and Judge Ronald. This was Harry Golden, whose entire left leg had been amputated after having been shattered by a high-power rifle bullet fired by a "law and order" deputy.