How It All Goes Down
- Day two of Mattie's journey of vengeance.
- In the morning, Mattie heads straight to the Federal courthouse, where she learns that Rooster Cogburn will be there later to give testimony at a trial.
- Mattie goes to check on the ponies that her father bought from some dude named Stonehill. She haggles with him until he agrees to buy back the ponies, the grey horse that belonged to Tom Chaney, and to pay her for Papa's horse Judy, since Judy was stolen while at his barn. She gets him to agree to $325—mostly so she'll stop bugging him.
- Fourteen-year-olds, right??
- After a nap in Stonehill's barn, she goes back to the courthouse.
- It's the trial of a man named Odus Wharton. She sees Rooster—he's a hefty, one-eyed man about forty years old who looks a lot like Grover Cleveland, mustache and all.
- Mattie listens as Rooster is cross-examined by Odus Wharton's lawyer, Lawyer Goudy.
- Here's the story.
- On November second, Rooster and Deputy Marshall Potter are on their way back to Fort Smith with a wagonload of prisoners when they hear that Tom Spotted-Gourd and his wife have been shot.
- They drive out to the ranch and find the wife dead and Tom dying. Tom tells Rooster that Odus and C.C. Wharton shot them and stole their money.
- Rooster and Potter give chase and find Odus, C.C., and their father Aaron roasting a pig on their mother's farm. (Their mom is Indian, because this is relevant. Of course.)
- Rooster tells Aaron he wants to talk to Odus and C.C., so obviously Aaron threatens Rooster with an axe. Then the guns come out.
- When it's all over, C.C. and Aaron are dead and Odus wounded.
- Rooster arrests Odus and finds the stolen money. Marshall Potter dies six days later, leaving a wife and six kids. Yikes.
- Mattie also learns that in his four years as a marshal, Rooster has killed twenty-six men. (You can practically hear the wheels turning in her head when she finds out that little score.)
- After the trial, Mattie introduces herself to Rooster and tries to hire him to hunt down Chaney.
- She goes with him to the room he rents in Mr. Lee's store. They eat and haggle. Rooster starts drinking and he and Lee play cards. At one point, Mattie falls asleep. Drunk, Rooster wakes her and shoots a rat right there in the room, because apparently people do stupid things when they get drunk in this book slash life.