True Grit: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

The next day, Mattie goes to the courthouse and asks a deputy about Tom Chaney, finding herself extremely disappointed when she learns there’s a long list of people the marshals plan to pursue before going after Chaney. Because Rooster Cogburn’s trial hasn’t started yet, Mattie goes to Stonehill’s barn, where she finds the group of ponies her father bought. Making her way into the back office, she meets Stonehill, a small man who expresses his condolences regarding Frank Ross’s death. Mattie tells him that she’s hoping to hire a marshal to track down Chaney, and he says, “Yes, yes, well might you labor to that end. At the same time I will counsel patience. The brave marshals do their best but they are few in numbers.” Going on, he points out that there are too many outlaws and too many “natural hiding places” in Indian Territory.

Getting to business, Mattie tells Stonehill that she wants to sell back the ponies her father bought, but Stonehill says this is “out of the question.” When Mattie points out that her family no longer needs them now that her father’s dead, Stonehill notes that the deal has been made and that he has “already lost money” on the ponies, so he doesn’t like the idea of taking them back. Switching course, Mattie says she wants him to pay her $300 for the loss of Judy and her father’s saddle, since both were stolen off of Stonehill’s property, making him responsible for the loss. Stonehill laughs at this and says that he can’t be held responsible for such events. “I will take it to law,” Mattie says, to which Stonehill replies, “You must do as you think best.”

“We will see if a widow and her three small children can get fair treatment in the courts of this city,” Mattie says. This, in turn, begins to make Stonehill uncomfortable. “You have no case,” he says, but Mattie tells him that Lawyer Daggett will help convince any jury that she does. “Where is your mother?” Stonehill asks, saying he doesn’t like negotiating with children, though Mattie assures him he won’t “like it any better when Lawyer Daggett gets hold” of him. Having cornered Stonehill, she says that Daggett will “back up any decision” she makes and that he can send a telegraph confirming this arrangement. With this, Stonehill makes several low offers to buy back the ponies, but Mattie holds her ground, aggravating Stonehill until he agrees to give her $325 once Daggett sends an official letter outlining the particulars.

After negotiation with Stonehill, Mattie goes to the telegraph office and sends a message to Daggett, telling him the terms of the deal and asking him to inform her mother that she’s all right. Then—after taking a short nap—she goes to the courthouse, where she squeezes into the back with a number of other spectators, all of whom want to see Rooster Cogburn testify against Odus Wharton, a well-known criminal he recently wounded and brought to jail. Mattie explains that the judge presiding over the case is a well-known man named Judge Isaac Parker, a strongly principled individual who isn’t afraid to sentence criminals to death. Indeed, some people even call his court “the Parker slaughterhouse.”

Mattie presents a transcript of Odus’s trial, which also happens to be the first time she lays eyes on Rooster Cogburn, a fat middle-aged man with one bad eye. When he takes the stand, the state prosecutor, Mr. Barlow, asks Rooster to explain what he was doing on November 2nd. Rooster embarks on a story, saying that he and a group of other marshals were taking a “wagonload of prisoners” from “Creek Nation” to Fort Smith when a boy told them that a man and his wife had been robbed and that the wife had been murdered. Rooster says he and his partner, Potter, left the wagon and rode their horses to see what the boy was talking about. When they arrived, they found the husband lying on the ground with a gunshot wound.

Continuing his story, Rooster says the dying man told them that “two Wharton boys” had come to rob them and that they murdered his wife when she tried to run. At this point, the Wharton boys forced the husband to tell them where he kept his money, and then they took off with his life’s savings. Sure enough, Rooster and Potter found an empty hiding place that was just big enough for a jar of money. They then waited at the scene of the crime for the other marshals to catch up with the wagon, at which point they decided amongst themselves that Rooster and Potter should be the ones to chase down the Whartons.

Rooster tells the court that he and Potter found Odus and C. C. Wharton with their father, Aaron. All three of them were standing by a stream and cooking hogs over a fire. Quietly, Rooster and Potter approached, but when they asked to talk to Odus and C. C., Aaron grabbed an ax and started yelling at them. Rooster backed away while urging Aaron to put down the weapon. “While this was going on C. C. Wharton edged over by the wash pot behind that steam and picked up a shotgun that was laying up against a saw-log,” Rooster tells the court, adding that Potter saw this but didn’t act quickly enough, as C. C. shot him before he could react. Rooster shot C. C., and when Aaron took a swipe at him with the ax, he shot him, too.

Rooster says Odus ran through the creek, so he shot him, though the bullet only “winged” him. Rooster cuffed Odus to a tree and tended to Potter’s wounds, then went to Aaron Wharton’s cottage and asked his wife questions, but she refused to talk. Nonetheless, he found the stolen jar of money. Potter died of septic fever six days after returning to Fort Smith. When Rooster finishes this story, Odus’s lawyer, Mr. Goudy, cross-examines him, asking how many people he has shot in the four years he’s been a U.S. marshal. “Shot or killed?” Rooster asks, to which Goudy says, “Let us restrict it to ‘killed’ so that we may have a manageable figure.” In response, Rooster estimates “around twelve or fifteen,” but when Goudy reminds him that he has “examined the records,” he admits it’s probably closer to 23.

Pointing to the fact that Rooster has killed 23 people, Mr. Goudy suggests that he’s a dangerous person. What’s more, he implies that Rooster has a personal vendetta against the Wharton family. To make this clear, he tells the court that Rooster shot Aaron Wharton’s eldest son the previous Spring. “This assassin Cogburn has too long been clothed with the authority of an honorable court,” Goudy says. Going on, he asks Rooster why he had to defend himself against the eldest Wharton, eventually demonstrating to the jury that Rooster approached the young man in the middle of the night with his gun drawn. Similarly, he gets Rooster to admit that he already had his gun out when he first came upon Odus, C. C., and Aaron.

Mr. Goudy asks Rooster to go through the exact details of his encounter with Odus, C. C., and Aaron. Rooster explains that he started backing away when Aaron advanced upon him with an axe, estimating that he moved roughly sixteen feet away while Aaron slowly pursued him. However, Goudy points out that Aaron was found with part of his body in the fire, meaning that Rooster lied about backing away or that he purposefully dragged him into the flames after killing him. Rooster awkwardly suggests that perhaps the hogs moved him into this position, and before Goudy has a chance to truly refute this, Judge Parker declares that—because the cross-examination has taken so long—the court will reconvene the following day.

Mattie watches as people file out of the court, noting that Odus Wharton’s face looks “hardened in sin.” Finally, after everyone has left, Rooster exits the courthouse and Mattie catches up to him, saying, “They tell me you are a man with true grit.” As he tells her to speak louder, he tries to roll a cigarette, but Mattie takes it and rolls it for him, eventually telling him she’s looking for Tom Chaney and that she needs “somebody to go after him.” At first, Rooster responds by simply asking where Mattie is from and suggesting that she go home to “help with the churning.” However, Mattie ignores this, plowing on to say that the government will pay Rooster two dollars to catch Chaney and ten cents for each mile he travels. “On top of that I will pay you a fifty-dollar reward,” she says.

Rooster is impressed by Mattie’s thoroughness. When he asks what she has in a little sugar sack she’s carrying, he’s astonished to find her father’s pistol, saying, “By God! A Colt’s dragoon! Why, you are no bigger than a corn nubbin! What are you doing with that pistol?” She tells him that the gun was her father’s and that she plans to use it to murder Tom Chaney “if the law fails to do so.” Turning to the matter at hand, Rooster says he doesn’t believe that Mattie can actually come up with $50, but she assures him she’ll “have it in a day or two.” She asks him if he knows of Lucky Ned Pepper, and he says he’s well-acquainted with him. “I shot him in the lip last August down in the Winding Stair Mountains,” he says. “He was plenty lucky that day.”

Mattie mentions that Chaney is running around with Lucky Ned Pepper’s gang, but Rooster isn’t ready to discuss the details of this case. Instead, he invites her over for dinner, saying they can “talk it over and make medicine,” though he still doesn’t believe she has $50. They go back to where he lives, which is in the back of a grocery store run by a Chinese man named Lee. After dinner, Mattie watches Rooster and Lee play cards while Rooster drinks whiskey, and every time she asks if he’s made up his mind about the case, he tells her not to rush him. “If I’m going up against Ned Pepper I will need a hundred dollars,” he says, adding that he’ll want fifty in advance. “You are trying to take advantage of me,” Mattie says, to which Rooster replies, “I am giving you my children’s rate.”

As Rooster and Lee continue to play cards, Mattie falls asleep, waiting for Rooster to walk her back to the Monarch. When she wakes up, Rooster is playing with her father’s pistol. Drunkenly pointing it at a rat, he says, “I will try this the new way.” He then whispers to the rat (which is eating from a sack of corn meal) pretending that he has a “writ” to arrest it for stealing from Lee. When the rat doesn’t stop eating, he shoots it. Mattie scolds Rooster for wasting her “loads,” but he makes fun of her by suggesting that she wouldn’t know how to load the gun even if she did have more ammunition. He then loads it with his own bullets, which he keeps in a box full of mismatched ammo.

“You can’t serve papers on a rat, baby sister,” Rooster drunkenly pontificates. “These shitepoke lawyers think you can but you can’t. All you can do with a rat is kill him or let him be. They don’t care nothing about papers.” Continuing on in this manner, he laments the fact that the legal system has been flooded with lawyers who want to protect “the rats.” “Let up on them rats! Give them rats a fair show!” he says, mocking these lawyers. As he rambles on, Mattie walks outside with the assumption that he’ll follow her to escort her home, but she realizes after a while that she’s alone. After stopping for a moment to get her “bearings,” she finds her way back to the Monarch, crawling into bed and noticing that she has a cough.