The Hole by the Creek

Two men rode out together one morning from a house in the Cherokee Nation, on two horses that both belonged to one of them. Around noon a witness heard shots near a deep hole on the bank of a creek about three miles away. That evening the other man came back with both horses. He explained that they had met a man in a buggy on the prairie, and that his companion had gone off with the stranger to an Indian agency. Weeks later the missing man's body was found in the hole, with a bullet hole through his hat and skull. He had been carrying about fifty dollars; no money was found on him, and his overcoat turned up in the accused's possession. The accused stuck to his account that his companion had left with another man.