The Lost Cabin Mine
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Title: The Lost Cabin Mine
Creator: Frederick Niven
Release date: October 18, 2013 [eBook #43975]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43975
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST CABIN MINE ***
Produced by Al Haines.
_*THE*_*
LOST CABIN
MINE*
_By_
FREDERICK NIVEN
_New York_
DODD, MEAD 6 COMPANY
1929
[Illustration: title page]
COPYRIGHT, 1908
BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
TO MY SISTER
*Contents*
CHAPTER
I. Introduces "The Apache Kid" with whom Later I become Acquainted
II. Mr. Laughlin Tells the Story up to Date
III. Mr. Laughlin's Prophecy is Fulfilled
IV. I Take my Life in my Hands
V. I Agree to "Keep the Peace" in a New Sense
VI. Farewell to Baker City
VII. The Man with the Red Head
VIII. What Befell at the Half-Way House
IX. First Blood
X. In the Enemy's Camp
XI. How it was Dark in the Sunlight
XII. I am Held as a Hostage
XIII. In which Apache Kid Behaves in his Wonted Way
XIV. Apache Kid Prophesies
XV. In which the Tables are Turned--at Some Cost
XVI. Sounds in the Forest
XVII. The Coming of Mike Canlan
XVIII. The Lost Cabin is Found
XIX. Canlan Hears Voices
XX. Compensation
XXI. Re-enter--The Sheriff of Baker City
XXII. The Mud-Slide
XXIII. The Sheriff Changes his Opinion
XXIV. For Fear of Judge Lynch
XXV. The Making of a Public Hero
XXVI. Apache Kid Makes a Speech
XXVII. The Beginning of the End
XXVIII. Apache Kid Behaves Strangely at the Half-Way House to Kettle
XXIX. So-Long
XXX. And Last
_*The Lost Cabin Mine*_
*CHAPTER I*
_*Introduces "The Apache Kid" with Whom Later
I Become Acquainted*_
The Lost Cabin Mine, as a name, is familiar to many. But the true story
of that mine there is no man who knows. Of that I am positive--because
"dead men tell no tales."
It was on the sixth day of June, 1900, that I first heard the unfinished
story of the Lost Cabin, the first half of the story I may call it, for
the story is all finished now, and in the second half I was destined to
play a part. Of the date I am certain because I verified it only the
other day when I came by accident upon a pile of letters, tied with red
silk ribbon and bearing a tag "Letters from Francis." These were the
letters I sent to my mother during my Odyssey and one of them, bearing
the date of the day succeeding that I have named, contained an account,
toned down very considerably, as I had thought necessary for her
sensitive and retired heart, of the previous day's doings, with an
outline of the strange tale heard that day. That nothing was mentioned
in the epistle of the doings of that night, you will be scarcely
astonished when you read of them.
I was sitting alone on the rear verandah of the Laughlin Hotel, Baker
City, watching the cicadi hopping about on the sun-scorched flats, now
and again raising my eyes to the great, confronting mountain, the lower
trees of which seemed as though trembling, seen through the heat haze;
while away above, the white wedge of the glacier, near the summit,
glistened dry and clear like salt in the midst of the high blue rocks.
The landlord, a thin, quick-moving man with a furtive air, a straggling
apology for a moustache, and tiny eyes that seemed ever on the alert,
came shuffling out to the verandah, hanging up there, to a hook in the
projecting roof, a parrot's cage which he carried.
His coming awoke me from my reveries.
"Hullo," he said: "still setting there, are you? Warmish?"
"Yes."
"You ain't rustled a job for yourself yet?" he inquired, touching the
edge of the cage lightly with his lean, bony fingers to stop its
swaying.
I shook my head. I had indeed been sitting there that very moment,
despite the brightness of the day, in a mood somewhat despondent,
wondering if ever I was to obtain that long-sought-for, long-wished-for
"job."
"Been up to the McNair Mine?" he asked.
I nodded.
"The Bonanza?"
I nodded again.
"The Poorman?"
"No good," I replied.
"Well, did you try the Molly Magee?"
"Yes."
"And?" he inquired, elevating his brows.
"Same old story," said I. "They all say they only take on experienced
men."
He looked at me with a half-smile, half-sneer, and the grey parrot
hanging above him with his head cocked on one side, just like his
master's, ejaculated:
"Well, if this don't beat cock-fighting!"
Shakespeare says that "what the declined is he will as soon read in the
eyes of others as feel in his own fall." I was beginning to read in the
eyes of others, those who knew that I had been in this roaring Baker
City almost a fortnight and was still idle, contempt for my incapacity.
Really, I do not believe now that any of them looked on me with
contempt; it was only my own inward self-reproach which I imagined
there, for men and women are kindlier than we think them in our own dark
days. But on that and at that moment it seemed to me as though the very
parrot jeered at me.
"You don't savvy this country," said the landlord. "You want always to
say, when they ask you: 'Do you understand the work?' 'why sure! I'm
experienced all right; I never done nothing else in my life.' You want
to say that, no matter what the job is you 're offered. If you want
ever to make enough money to be able to get a pack-horse and a outfit
and go prospectin' on your own, that's what you want to say."
"But that would be to tell a downright lie," said I.
"Well," drawled the landlord, lifting his soft hat between his thumb and
his first finger and scratching his head on the little bald part of the
crown with the third finger, the little finger cocked in the air; "well,
now that you put it that way--well, I guess it would. I never looked at
it that way before. You see, they all ask you first pop: 'Did you ever
do it before?' You says: 'Yes, never did anything else since I left the
cradle.' It's just a form of words when you strike a man for a job."
I broke into a feeble laugh, which the parrot took up with such a
raucous voice that the landlord turned and yelled to it: "Shut up!"
"I don't have to!" shrieked the parrot, promptly, and you could have
thought that his little eyes sparkled with real indignation. Just then
the landlord's wife appeared at the door.
"See here," cried Mr. Laughlin, turning to her, "there 's that parrot o'
yourn, I told him to shut up his row just now, and he rips back at me,
'I don't have to!' What you make o' that? Are you goin' to permit
that? Everything connected with you seems conspirin' agin' me to
cheapen me--you and your relations what come here and put up for months
on end, and your--your--your derned old grey parrot!"
"Abraham Laughlin," said the lady, her green eyes flashing, "you bin
drinkin' ag'in, and ef you ain't sober to-morrow I go back east home to
my mother."
It gave me a new thought as to the longevity of the human race to hear
Mrs. Laughlin speak of her mother back east. I hung my head and studied
the planking of the verandah, then looked upward and gazed at the
far-off glacier glittering under the blue sky, tried to wear the
appearance of a deaf man who had not heard this altercation. Really I
took the matter too seriously. Had I only known it at the time, they
were a most devoted couple and would--not "kiss again with tears" and
seek forgiveness and reconciliation, but--speak to each other most
kindly, as though no "words" had ever passed between them, half an hour
later. But at the time of the little altercation on the verandah, when
Mrs. Laughlin gave voice to her threat and then, turning, stalked back
into the hotel, Laughlin wheeled about with his head thrust forward,
showing his lean neck craning out of his wide collar, and opened his
lips as though to discharge a pursuing shot. But the parrot took the
words out of his mouth, so to speak, giving a shriek of laughter and
crying out: "Well, if this don't beat cock-fighting!"
The landlord looked up quizzically at the bird and then there was an
awkward pause. I wondered what to say to break this silence that
followed upon the exhibition of the break in the connubial bliss of my
landlord and his wife. Then I remembered something that I decidedly did
want to ask, so I was actually more seeking information than striving to
put Mr. Laughlin at his ease again, when I said:
"By the way, what is all this talk I hear about the Lost Cabin Mine?
Everybody is speaking about it, you know. What is the Lost Cabin Mine?
What is the story of it? People seem just to take it for granted that
everybody knows about it."
"Gee-whiz!" said the landlord in astonishment, wheeling round upon me.
He stretched out a hand to a chair, dragged it along the verandah, and
sat down beside me in the shadow. "You don't know that story? Why,
then I 'll give you all there is to it so far. And talking about the
Lost Cabin, now there's what you might be doin' if on'y you had the
price of an outfit--go out and find it, my bold buck, and live happy
ever after----"
He stopped abruptly, for a man had come out of the hotel and now stood
meditating on the verandah. He was a lithe, sun-browned fellow, this,
wearing a loose jacket, wearing it open, disclosing a black shirt with
pearl buttons. Round his neck was a great, cream-coloured kerchief that
hung half down his back in a V shape, as is the manner with cowboys and
not usual among miners. This little detail of the kerchief was
sufficient to mark him out in that city, for the nearest cattle ranch
was about two hundred miles to the south-east and when the "boys" who
worked there sought the delights of civilisation it was not to Baker
City, but to one of the towns on the railroad, such as Bogus City or
Kettle River Gap, that they journeyed. On his legs were blue dungaree
overalls, turned up at the bottom as though to let the world see that he
wore, beneath the overalls, a very fine pair of trousers. On his head
was a round, soft hat, not broad of brim, but the brim in front was bent
down, shading his eyes. The cream-colour of his kerchief set off his
healthy brown skin and his black, crisp hair. There were no spurs in
his boots; for all that he had the bearing of one more at home on the
plains than in the mountains. A picturesque figure he was, one to
observe casually and look at again with interest, though he bore himself
without swagger or any apparent attempt at attracting attention, except
for one thing, and that was that in either ear there glistened a tiny
golden ear-ring. His brows were puckered as in thought and from his
nostrils came two long gusts of smoke as he stood there biting his cigar
and glaring on the yellow sand and the chirring cicadi. Then he raised
his head, glancing round on us, and his face brightened.
"Warmish," he said.
"That's what, right warmish," the proprietor replied affably, and now
the man with the ear-rings, having apparently come to the end of his
meditations, stepped lightly off into the loose sand and Laughlin jogged
me with his elbow and nodded to me, rolling his eyes toward the
departing man as though to say, "Take a good look at him, and when he is
out of earshot I shall tell you of him." This was precisely the
proprietor's meaning.
"That's Apache Kid," he said softly at last, and when Apache Kid had
gone from sight he turned again to me and remarked, with the air of a
man making an astounding disclosure:
"That's Apache Kid, and he's in this here story of the Lost Cabin. Yap,
that's what they call him, though he ain't the real original, of course.
The real original was hanged down in Lincoln County, New Mexico, about
twenty-five year back. Hanged at the age of twenty-one he was, and had
killed twenty-one men, which is an interesting fact to consider. That's
the way with names. I know a fellow they call Texas Jack yet, but the
real original died long ago. I mind the original. Omohundro was his
correct name; as quiet a man as you want to see, Jack B. Omohundro, with
eyes the colour of a knife-blade. But I 'm driftin' away. What you
want to get posted up on is the Lost Cabin Mine."
He jerked his chair closer to me, tapped me on the knee, and cleared his
throat; but I seemed fated not to hear the truth of that mystery yet,
for Mrs. Laughlin stood again on the verandah.
"Abraham," she said in an aggrieved tone, "there ain't nobody in the
bar."
Up jumped Abraham, his whole bearing, from his bowed head to his bent
knees, apologetic.
"I was just tellin' this gentleman a story," he explained.
"I 'm astonished at you then," she said. "An old man like you a-telling
your stories to a young lad like that! You 'd be doin' better slippin'
into the bar and takin' a smell at that there barkeep's breath."
Mr. Laughlin turned to me.
"Come into the bar, sir; come into the bar. We 've got a new barkeep
and the mistress suspects him o' takin' some more than even a barkeep is
expected to take. I hev to take a look to him once in a while."
Mrs. Laughlin disappeared into her own sanctum, satisfied; while the
"pro-prietor" and I went into the bar-room.
The "barkeep" was polishing up his glasses. In one corner sat a grimy,
bearded man in the prime of life but with a dazed and lonely eye. He
always sat in that particular corner, as by ancient right, morning,
noon, and evening, playing an eternal solitary game of cards, the whole
deck of cards spread before him on a table. He moved them about,
changing their positions, lifting here and replacing there, but, though
I had watched him several times, I could never discover the system of
his lonely game.
"Who is that man?" I quietly inquired. "He is always playing there,
always alone, never speaking to a soul."
"The boys call him 'The Failure,'" Laughlin explained. "You find a man
like that in the corner of most every ho-tel-bar you go into in this
here Western country--always a-playing that there lonesome game, I 'm
always scared to ask 'em what the rudiments o' that game is for they 're
always kind o' rat-house,--of unsound mind, them men is. I heerd a
gentleman explain one day that it's a great game for steadyin' the head.
He gets a remittance from England, they say. Anyhow, he stands up to
the bar once every two months and blows himself in for about three-four
days. Then he goes back to his table there and sets down to his
lonesome card game again and frowns away over it for another couple o'
months. I guess that gentleman was right in what he explained. I guess
he holds his brains together on that there game."
We found seats in a corner of the room and Laughlin again cleared his
throat. He had a name for taking a real delight in imparting
information and spinning yarns, true, fictitious, and otherwise, to his
guests, and this time we were not interrupted. He told me the story of
the Lost Cabin Mine, or as much of that story as was known by that time,
ere his smiling Chinese cook came to inform him "dinnah vely good.
Number A1 dinnah to-day, Misholaughlin, ledy in half-oh."
*CHAPTER II*
_*Mr. Laughlin Tells the Story up to Date*_
Mr. Laughlin's suggestion that I should go out and look for this Lost
Cabin and, finding it, "live happy ever after," made me but the more
anxious to hear all that was to be told regarding it.
"Well, about this here Lost Cabin Mine," he said. "There's a little,
short, stubby fellow that you maybe have noticed around here, with a
pock-marked face,--Mike Canlan, they call him. He was up to Tremont
putting in assessment on a claim he has in the mountains there away, and
he was comin' along back by the trail on the mountains that runs kind o'
parallel with the stage road, but away up on the hills, and there he
picks up a feller nigh dead,--starved to death, pretty nigh. Mike gets
him up on his pack-horse and comes along slow down through the mountain
till he hits the waggon road from the Poorman. There a team from the
Poorman Mine makes up on him. That there fellow, Apache Kid, was
drivin' the team, and along with him was Larry Donoghue, a partner o'
his, with another team. They had been haulin' up supplies for one of the
stores, and was comin' down light. They offer to help Canlan down with
the dying man, seein' as how the hoss was gettin' pretty jaded with all
Canlan's outfit on its back, and this here man, too, tied on, and
wabbling about mighty weak."
Laughlin broke off here to nod his head sagaciously. "From what has
transpired since, I guess Canlan was kind o' sorry he fell in with them
two, and I reckon he wondered if there was no kind of an excuse he could
put up for rejecting their offer o' service and continuin' to pack the
feller down himself. Anyways, they got the man into the Apache's
waggon, and my house bein' the nighest to the waggon road and the
mountain, they pulled up at my door and we all carries the fellow up to
a room. I was at the door. Canlan was sitting on the bed-foot. Apache
Kid and Larry Donoghue was laying him out comf'able. The fellow groans
and mumbles something, and Canlan gave a bit of a start forward, and
says he: 'There, there now, that 'll do; you 've got him up all right.
I reckon that's all that's wanted. You can go for a doctor, now, if you
want to help at all.' There was something kind o' strained in his
voice, and I think Apache Kid noticed it the way he looks round. 'Why,'
he says, 'I think, seein' as you,' and he stops and looks Canlan plumb
in the eye, 'seein' as you _found_ the man, you had better fetch the
doctor and finish your job. My partner and I will sit by him till the
doctor comes.' Canlan looked just a little bit rattled when Apache Kid
says, lookin' at the man in the bed: 'He seems to have got a kind o' a
knock on the head here.' 'Yes,' says Canlan, 'I got him where he had
fallen down. I reckon he got that punch then.' And then Apache Kid
looks at Larry Donoghue, and Larry looks at him, and they both smile,
and Canlan cries out: 'Oh, if that's what you think, why I 'll go for
the doctor without any more ado!'"
Laughlin paused, and, "You savvy the idea?" he asked.
"Not quite," I said.
He tapped me on the knee, and, bending forward, said: "Don't you see,
Apache Kid and Larry hed no suspicions o' foul play at all, but they was
wanting to get alone in the room with the feller, and this was just
Apache's bluff to get a move on Canlan. Canlan was no sooner gone than
Apache Kid asks me to fetch a glass o' spirits. It was only thinkin' it
over after that I saw through the thing; anyhow, I come down for the
glass, and when I got up, derned if they did n't hev the man propped up
in bed, and him mumblin' away and them bendin' over him listening eager
to him. They gave him the liquor, and he began talking a trifle
stronger, and took two-three deep gusts o' breath. Then he began
mumblin' again."
Mr. Laughlin looked furtively round and then, leaning forward again,
thrust his neck forward and with infinite disgust in his voice said:
"And damn me if that wife o' mine did n't come to the stair-end right
then and start yellin' on me to come down."
Laughlin shook his head sadly. "Seems her derned old parrot was
shoutin' for food and as it had all give out she wants me to go down to
the store for some more. But I must say that she had just come in
herself and did n't know nothin' about the business that was goin' on
upstairs. When Canlan and the doctor did arrive and go up the fellow
was dead--sure thing--dead as--dead as--" he searched for the simile
without which he could not speak for long. "Dead as God!" he said in a
horrible whisper, raising his grey eyebrows.
I shuddered somehow at the words, and yet in such a red-hot, ungodly
place as Baker City I could almost understand the phrase. There was
another pause after that and then Laughlin cleared his throat again and
held up a lean finger in my face.
"There's where the place comes in," said he, "where you says 'the plot
thickens,' for I 'm a son of a gun if word did n't come down next day
that the fellers up at the Poorman Mine had picked up just such another
dead-beat. This here corpse of which I bin tellin' you was indemnified
after as having been in company with the other. But the man the Poorman
boys picked up was jest able to tell them that he had seen the lights o'
their bunk-house and was trying to make for it. Told them that he and
two partners had struck it rich in the mountains, pow'ful rich, he said,
and hed all been so fevered like that they let grub run out. Then they
went out looking for something to shoot up and could n't find a thing.
One of 'em went off then to fetch supplies, lost his way in them
mountains, wanders about nigh onto a week--and hits their own camp ag'in
at the end o' that time. Isn't it terrible? You'd think that after
striking it luck jest turned about and hed a laugh at 'em for a change.
They comes rushin' on him, the other two, expecting grub-- Grub
nothing! He was too derned tired to budge then, and so the other two
sets out then-- This fellow what the Poorman boys picked up was doin'
his level best to tell 'em where the place was, for the sake of his
partner left there, and in the middle of his talk he took a fit and
never came out of it. All they know is that there was a cabin built at
the place. That's the story for you."
"But what about the man who was brought down here; did he not leave any
indication?"
"Now you 're askin'," said Laughlin. "But I see you bin payin'
attention to this yere story. Now you're askin'. Nobody knows whether
he did or not. But this I can tell you--that Apache Kid and Larry
Donoghue has done nothing since then but jest wander about with the tail
of an eye on Canlan, and Canlan returns the compliment. And here 's
miners comin' in from the Poorman and stoppin' in town a night and
trying to fill Apache Kid and his mate full, and trying the same on
Canlan to get them to talk, and them just sittin' smilin' through it
all, and nobody knows what they think."
"But," said I, "if they do know, could the three of them not come to
some agreement and go out and find the place? If the third man is dead
there, I suppose the mine would be theirs and they could share on it.
Besides, while they stay here doubtless other men will be out looking
for the cabin."
The landlord listened attentively to me.
"Well," said he, "as for your first remark, Canlan is too all-fired hard
a man to make any such daffy with them, and there's just that touch of
the devil in Apache Kid and that amount of hang-dog in Donoghue to
prevent them making up to Canlan, I reckon. Not but what they pump each
other. Sometimes they get out there on the verandah nights, and, you
bein' in the know now, you 'll understand what's running underneath
everything they say. As for the other men goin' out and looking for a
cabin! Shucks! Might as well go and look for that needle you hear
people talk about in the haystack. Not but what a great lot has gone
out. Most every man in the Poorman Mine went off with a pack-hoss to
hunt it, and plenty others too. And between you and me," said the
landlord, "I reckon they 're all on the wrong scent. They 're all away
along Baker Range, and I reckon they must be on the wrong scent there or
else them three others wouldn't be sittin' here in Baker City smiling;
that is, if they dew know where the location is."
Just then the Chinese cook arrived quietly on the scene to inform Mr.
Laughlin of the progress of dinner. Then a laugh sounded in the passage
and Apache Kid entered the bar-room accompanied by a heavy-set,
loose-jawed man of thirty years or thereby, a man with a slovenly
appearance in his dress and a cruel expression on his face.
"That's them both," said Laughlin, prodding me with his elbow as they
marched through the bar and out to the rear verandah where we heard them
dragging chairs about, and the harsh voice of the parrot, evidently
awakened from his reveries in the sunshine:
"Well, well! If this ain't----" and a dry cackle of laughter.
"They 're lookin' right lively and pleased with themselves," said the
proprietor. "I reckon if Canlan comes along to-night it will be worth
your while, now that you know the ins and outs of the business, to keep
an eye on the three and watch the co-mical game they keep on playin'
with each other. But it can't go on forever, that there game. I do
hope, if they make a bloody end to it, it don't take place in my house.
Times is changed from the old days. I 've seen when it was quite an
advertisement to have a bit of shooting in your house some night. And
if there was n't enough holes made in the roof and chairs broke, you
could make some more damage yourself; and the crowd would come in, and
you 'd point out where so-and-so was standing, and where so-and-so was
settin', and tell 'em how it happened, and them listening and setting up
the drinks all the time. It certainly was good for business, a little
shooting now and then, in the old days. But times is changed, and the
sheriff we hev now is a very lively man. All the same, we ain't done
with Lost Cabin Mine yet--and that ain't no lie."
*CHAPTER III*
_*Mr. Laughlin's Prophecy is Fulfilled*_
A sense of exhilaration filled me, as I strolled down town that evening,
which I can only ascribe to the rare atmosphere of that part of the
world. It was certainly not due to any improvement in my financial
condition, nor to any hope of "making my pile" speedily, and to "make a
pile" is the predominating thought in men's minds there, with an
intensity that is known in few other lands. I was pondering the story of
the Lost Cabin Mine as I went, and in my own mind had come to the
decision that Apache Kid and his comrade knew the whereabouts of that
bonanza. Canlan, I argued, if he knew its locality at all, must have
come by his news before he fell in with his rivals on the waggon road,
for after that, according to the hotel-keeper's narrative, he had had no
speech with the dying man.
I was in the midst of these reflections when I turned into Baker Street,
the main street of Baker City. There was a wonderful bustle there; men
were coming and going on either sidewalk thick as bees in hiving time;
the golden air of evening was laden with the perfume of cigars; indeed,
the blue of the smoke never seemed to fly clear of Baker Street on the
evenings; and the sound of the many phonographs that thrust their
trumpets out from all the stores on that thoroughfare, added to the din
of voices and laughter, rose above the sounds of talk, to be precise,
with a barbaric medley of hoarse songs and throaty recitations. So much
for the sidewalks. In the middle of the street, to cross which one had
to wade knee-deep in sand, pack-horses were constantly coming and going
and groaning teams arriving from the mountains. To add to the barbarous
nature of the scene, now and again an Indian would go by, not with
feathered head-dress as in former days, but with a gaudy kerchief bound
about his head, tinsel glittering here and there about his half-savage,
half-civilised garb, and a pennon of dust following the quick patter of
his pony's hoofs. I walked the length of Baker Street and then turned,
walking back again with a numb pain suddenly in my heart, for as I
turned right about I saw the great, quiet hills far off, and beyond them
the ineffable blue of the sky. And there is something in me that makes
me always fall silent when amidst the din of men I see the enduring,
uncomplaining, undesiring hills. So I went back to the hotel again, and
without passing through the bar but going around the house, found the
rear verandah untenanted, with its half dozen vacant chairs, and there I
sat down to watch the twilight change the hills. But I had not been
seated long when a small set man, smelling very strongly of whisky, came
out with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and, leaning against one
of the verandah props, looked up at the hills, spitting at regular
intervals far out into the sand and slowly ruminating a chew of tobacco.
"Canlan, for a certainty," I said to myself, when he, looking toward the
door from which he had emerged, attracted by a sudden louder outbreak of
voices and rattling of chairs within, revealed to me a face very sorely
pock-marked, as was easily seen with the lamplight streaming out on him
from the bar. On seeing me he made some remark on the evening, came
over and sat down beside me, and asked me why I sat at the back of the
hotel instead of at the front.
"Because one can see the hills from here," said I.
He grunted and remarked that a man would do better to sit at the front
and see what was going on in the town. Then he rose and, walking to and
fro, flung remarks to me, in passing, regarding the doings in the city
and the mines and so forth, the local gossip of the place. He had just
reverted to his first theme of the absurdity of sitting at the rear of
the house when out came Apache Kid and Donoghue and threw themselves
into the chairs near me, Donoghue taking the one beside me which Canlan
had just vacated. If Canlan thought a man a fool for choosing the rear
instead of the front, he was evidently, nevertheless, content to be a
fool himself, for after one or two peregrinations and expectorations he
drew a chair to the front of the verandah and seated himself, half
turned towards us, and began amusing himself with tilting the chair to
and fro like a rocker. The valley was all in shadow now, and as we sat
there in the silence the moon swam up in the middle of one of the clefts
of the mountains, silhouetting for a brief space, ere it left them for
the open sky, the ragged edge of the tree-tops in the highest forest.
Apache Kid muttered something, Donoghue growled, "What say?" And it
surprised me somewhat to hear the reply: "O! I was only saying 'with
how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies.' It's lonesome-like, up
there, Larry."
"Aye! Lonesome!" replied Larry with a sigh.
A fifth man joined us then, and, hearing this, remarked: "A man thinks
powerful up there."
"That's no lie," Donoghue growled, and so the conversation, if
conversation you can call it, went on, interspersed with long spaces of
silence, broken only by the gurgling of the newcomer's pipe and Canlan's
"spit, spit" which came quicker now. Men are prone in such times as
these to sit and exchange truisms instead of carrying on any manner of
conversation. Yet to me, not long in the country, there was a touch of
mystery in even the truisms.
"I never seen a man who had spent much time in the mountains that was
just what you could call all there in the upper story," said the man
with the juicy pipe.
"Nor I," said Donoghue.
"They 're all half crazy, them old prospectors," continued the first,
"and tell you the queerest yarns about things they 've seen in the
mountains and expect you to believe them. You can see from the way they
talk that they believe 'em themselves. But I don't see why a man should
lose his reason in the hills. If a man lets his brain go when he 's up
there, then he don't have any real enjoyment out of the fortune he
makes--if he happens to strike it."
The moon was drifted far upward now and all the frontage of the hill was
tipped with light green, among the darker green, where the trees that
soared above their neighbours caught the light. "And there must be lots
of fortunes lying there thick if one knew where to find them," continued
the talker of truisms.
"Where?" said Apache in a soft voice.
"In the mountains, in the mountains," was the reply.
"Why do you ask where?" said Donoghue sharply. "Do you think if this
gentleman knew where to find 'em he would be sitting here this blessed
night?"
I felt my heart take a quicker beat at that. Knowing what I knew of
three of these men here I began to see what Mr. Laughlin meant by the
"game" they were playing.
"O, he might," said Canlan, now speaking for the first time since
Apache's arrival.
"That would be a crazy thing to do," said Donoghue. "That would--a
crazy thing--to set here instead of going and locating it."
"O, I don't know about _crazy_," said Mike. "You see, he might be
waiting to see if anybody else knew where it was."
The soft-footed Chinese attendant appeared carrying a lamp which he hung
up above our heads, and in the light of it I saw the face of the man
whose name I did not know, and he seemed mystified by the turn the
conversation had taken. I was looking at him now, thinking to myself
that I too would have been mystified had I not been posted in the matter
that afternoon, and suddenly I heard Donoghue say: "By God! he knows
right enough, Apache," and a gleam of light flashed in my eyes. It was
the barrel of a revolver, but not aimed at me. It was in Donoghue's
hand, and pointed fairly at Canlan's head. With a sudden intake of my
breath in horror I flung out my hand and knocked the barrel up. There
was a little shaft of flame, a sharp crack and puff of bitter smoke, and
next moment a clatter of feet within and a knot of men thronging and
craning at the door, while the window behind was darkened with others
shouldering there and pressing their faces against the glass.
"O you----" began Apache, and "What's this?" cried Laughlin, coming out,
no coward, as one might imagine, but calm enough and yet angry as I
could see.
"What in thunder are you all rubber-necking at the door there for?"
cried Apache Kid, springing up.
"Was it you fired that gun?" challenged the landlord.
"No, not I," cried Apache so that all could hear. "Not but what I was
the cause of it, by betting my partner here he could n't snap a bat on
the wing in the dusk. I never thought he'd try it, but he's as
crazy----"
"I crazy!" cried out Donoghue; and to look at him you would have thought
him really infuriated by the suggestion; but they knew how to play into
each other's hands.
All this time I sat motionless. The stranger rose and passed by,
remarking: "This ain't my trouble, I guess," and away indoors he went
among the throng, and I heard him cry out in reply to the questions: "I
don't know anything about it--saw nothing--I was asleep--I don't even
know who fired."
"Haw! Did n't even wake in time to see whose pistol was smoking, eh?"
"No," cried he, "not even in time for that."
"Quite right, you," cried another. But the trouble was not yet quite
over on the verandah, for Laughlin, with his little eyes looking very
fierce and determined, remarked: "Well, gentlemen, I can't be having any
shooting of any kind in my hotel. Besides, you know there 's a law
ag'in' carrying weapons here."
"No there ain't!" cried Donoghue. "It's concealed weapons the law is
against, and I carry my gun plain for every man to see."
Canlan had sat all this while on his seat as calm as you please, but
suddenly the crowd at the door opened out and somebody said: "Say, here
's the sheriff, boys," and at these words two men sprang from the
verandah; the one was Donoghue, and Canlan the other. I saw them a
moment running helter-skelter in the sand, but when the sheriff made his
appearance they were gone.
The sheriff had to get as much of the story as he could from the
proprietor, who was very civil and polite, but lied ferociously, saying
he did not know who the men were who had been on the verandah.
"I know you, anyhow," said the sheriff, turning on Apache Kid. "Allow
me, sir," and walking up to Apache Kid he drew his hand over his pockets
and felt him upon the hips.
Then I knew why Canlan, though entirely innocent in this matter, had
fled at the cry of "sheriff." He, I guessed, would not have come off so
well as Apache Kid in a search for weapons.
At this stage of the proceedings the Chinese attendant passed me, quiet
as is the wont of his race, and brushed up against Apache Kid just as
the sheriff turned to ask Mr. Laughlin if he could not describe the man
who had fired the shot. "I ain't been out on the verandah not for a
good hour," began the landlord, when Apache Kid broke in, "Well,
Sheriff, I can tell you the name of one of the men who was here."
"O!" said the sheriff, "and what was his name?"
"Mike Canlan," said the Apache Kid, calmly.
"Yes," said the sheriff, looking on him with narrowing eyes, "and the
name of the other was Larry Donoghue."
"Could n't very well be Larry," said Apache Kid. "Larry was drunk
to-night before sunset, and I believe you 'll find him snoring in room
number thirty at this very moment."
The sheriff gazed on him a little space and I noticed, on stealing a
glance at Mr. Laughlin, that a quick look of surprise passed over his
colourless face.
There was a ring as of respect in the sheriff's voice when, after a
long, eye-to-eye scrutiny of Apache Kid, he said slowly: "You 're a deep
man, Apache, but you won't get me to play into your hands."
So saying he stepped over to me and for the first time addressed me.
"As for you, my lad, I have n't asked you any questions, because it's
better that the like of you don't get mixed up at all in these kind of
affairs, not even on the right side." He laid his hand on my shoulder
in a fatherly fashion, "I 've had my eye on you, as I have my eye on
everybody, and I know you 're an honest enough lad and doing your best
to get a start here. I ain't even blaming you for being in the middle
of this, but you take the advice of a man that has been sheriff in a
dozen different parts of the West, and when you see signs of trouble
just you go away and leave it. Trouble with a gun seldom springs up
between a good man and a bad, but most always between two bad men."
"Is that my character you are soliloquising on?" said Apache Kid. The
sheriff turned on him and his face hardened again. "For Heaven's sake,
Apache," he said, "if you and Canlan both know where the Lost Cabin is,
why can't you have the grit to start off? If he follows you, well, you
can fix him. It'll save me a job later on."
"Well, for the sake of the argument," said Apache, "but remember I 'm
not saying I know, suppose he followed up and shot me out of a bush some
night?"
"I'd be mighty sorry," said the sheriff, "for I think between the pair
of you he 's a worse man for the health of the country."
A boyish look came over Apache Kid's face that made me think him younger
than I had at first considered him. He looked pleased at the sheriff's
words and bowed in a way that betokened a knowledge of usages other than
those of Baker City.
"Thank you, Sheriff," he said. "I 'll see what can be done."
Off went the sheriff smartly then, without another word, and Apache Kid
turned to me.
"I 've got to thank you for preventing----" he began, and then the
Chinaman appeared beside us. "Well, Chink?"
"Maybe that littee jobee woth half a dollah, eh?"
"Did Donoghue give you nothing for bringing the message?"
"Oh, no," and a bland smile. "Mishadonah think you give me half a
dollah."
"Well, it was certainly worth half a dollar; but remember, if I find out
that Donoghue gave you anything,----"
"Oh yes," said the Chinaman, with a slight look of perturbation,
"Mishadonah he gave me half-dollah."
Apache Kid laughed. "Well," he said, "you don't hold up your bluff very
long. However, here you are, here's half a dollar to you all the
same--for your truthfulness."
I experienced then a feeling of great disgust. Here was this Chinaman
lying and wheedling for half a dollar; here just a few minutes gone I
had seen murder attempted--and for what? All occasioned again by that
lust for gold. And here beside me was a man with a certain likableness
about him (so that, as I had observed, even the sheriff, who suspected
him, had a warm side to him) lying and humbugging and deceiving. I
thought to myself that doubtless his only objection to Larry Donoghue's
attempt at murder was because of the prominence of it in this place and
the difficulties that would have ensued in proving Larry guiltless had
the attempt been consummated. "This man," said I to myself, "for all
that likableness in his manner, the kindly sparkle of his eyes, and the
smile on his lips, is no better than the hang-dog fellow he sought to
shield--worse, indeed, for he has the bearing of one who has had a
training of another order." And then I saw Mrs. Laughlin's red head and
freckled face and lean, lissome form in the doorway. She was beckoning
me to her, and when I made haste to see what she wanted with me she
looked on me with much tenderness and said: "You want to remember what
the sheriff said to you, my lad. Take my advice and leave that fellow
out there alone for to-night. He's a reckless lad and from the way he
is talking to you he seems to have taken a fancy to you. But you leave
him alone. He 's a deep lad, is Apache Kid, and for all his taking way
he leads a life I 'm sure neither his mother would like to see him in,
nor your mother (if you have one) would like to see you taking up.
There's some says he's little better than the fellow he gets his name
from. I 'm sorry for you lads when I see you getting off the trail."
So what with the words of the sheriff and this well-meant talk and my
own disgust at all these doings, I made up my mind to keep clear of
these three men and not permit my curiosity regarding the Lost Cabin
Mine to lead me into their company again. But when I went up to my
room, before going to bed, I counted my remaining money and found that I
had but seven dollars to my name. I thought to myself then that the
Lost Cabin Mine would be a mighty convenient thing to find. And in my
dreams that night I wandered up hill and down dale seeking for the Lost
Cabin and engaging in hand-to-hand conflicts with all three of these
men, Canlan, Donoghue, and the Apache Kid. It was on awakening from one
of these conflicts that I lay thinking over all that I had heard of that
mysterious Cabin and all that I had seen of the three principally
connected with it. Revolving these thoughts in my mind, it occurred to
me that it was an unaccountable thing, if all three knew the situation
of the mine, that the two who were "partners" should not simply start
out for it and risk being followed up and shadowed by Canlan. They were
always two to one and could take watch and watch by night lest Canlan
should follow and attempt to slay them from the bushes; for that, it
would appear, was the chief danger in the matter.
Canlan's dread of starting alone I could understand. Then suddenly I
sat upright in bed with the sudden belief that the truth of the matter
was that Canlan, and Canlan only, knew of the mine's situation. "But
that again can't be," said I, "for undoubtedly Donoghue meant murder
to-night and that would be to kill the goose with the golden eggs." I
was no nearer a solution of the mystery but I could not dismiss the
matter from my mind. "I believe," said I to myself, "that instead of
having nothing to do with this Lost Cabin Mine I will yet find out the
truth of it from these men. Who knows but what I, even I, may be the
one for whom the mine with all its treasure waits?"
*CHAPTER IV*
_*I Take My Life in My Hands*_
After breakfast on the day following the incident of the verandah I was
journeying down town to post two letters, the Lost Cabin Mine still
uppermost in my mind, when I came, at the turning into Baker Street,
face to face with the man Donoghue. It was clear that he saw me,--he
could not help seeing me, so directly were we meeting,--and I wondered
if now he would have a word to say to me regarding the part I played on
the preceding evening. Sure enough, he stopped; but there was only
friendliness on his face and the heaviness of it and the sulkiness were
hardly visible when he smiled.
He held out his hand to me with evident sincerity, and said that he had
to thank me for preventing what he called "an accident last night."
I smiled at the word, for he spoke it so easily, as though the whole
thing were a mere bagatelle to him. "It was right stupid of me," he
said. "But Laughlin keeps such bad liquor! Canlan, too, had had too
much of it, or he would never have tried to irritate me with his
remark." I was trying to recollect the exact words of that remark which
Donoghue classified as "irritating" when he interrupted my thoughts
with: "The Apache Kid and me has quit the Laughlin House."
"Yes, I did n't see you at breakfast there," said I.
"Was Canlan there?" he asked eagerly.
"Not while I was breakfasting, at any rate," I replied.
He nursed his chin in his hand at that and stood pondering something.
Then: "Quite so, quite so," he commented as though to himself. Then to
me: "By the way, would you be so kind as to come down this evening to
Blaine's? The Apache Kid asked me to try and see you and ask you if you
would be good enough to come down."
"Blaine's?" I asked. "Where is Blaine's?"
"Blaine, Blaine, Lincoln Avenue; near the corner of Twenty-second
Street."
It amazed me to hear of a Twenty-second Street in this city that boasted
only one long street (Baker Street) and six streets running off it. But
of course, a street is a street in a new city even though it can boast
only of a house at either corner and has nothing between these corner
houses but tree-stumps, or sand, or sage-bushes, and little boards
thrust into the ground announcing: "This is a sure-thing lot. Its day
will come very soon. See about it when it can be bought cheap from
----, Real Estate Agent, office open day and night."
But Donoghue, seeing that I did not know the streets of the city by
name, directed me:
"You go right along Baker Street,--you know it, of course, the main
street of this progressive burgh?--straight ahead west; turn down third
on the right; look up at the store front there and you read 'H.B.
Blaine. Makes you think o' Home and Mother.' It's a coffee-joint, you
see. There 's a coffee urn in the window and two plates, one with
crackers on it and t' other with doughnuts. You walk right in and ask
for the Apache Kid--straight goods--no josh." He stopped to give
emphasis to the rest and after that pause he said in a meaning tone:
"And--you--will--hear--o' something to your advantage."
He nodded sedately and, without giving me time to say anything in reply,
moved off. You may be sure I pondered this invitation as I went along
roaring Baker Street to the post-office. And I was indeed in two minds
about it, uncertain whether to call in at Blaine's or not. Both the
sheriff and Mrs. Laughlin had cautioned me against these men, and I had,
besides, seen enough of them to know myself that they were not just all
that could be desired. The word the sheriff had used regarding Apache
Kid's nature, "deep," came into my mind, along with reflections on all
his prevarications of the previous day. It occurred to me that it would
be quite in keeping with him to pretend gratefulness to me, at the
moment, for my interference, and to post up Donoghue to do the same,
with the intention in his mind all the while of "getting me in a quiet
corner," as the phrase is. I think I may be excused this judgment
considering all the duplicity I had already seen him practise. A story
that I had heard somewhere of a trap-door in a floor which opened and
precipitated whoever stood upon it down into a hole among rats came into
my head. Perhaps H. B. Blaine had such a trap-door in his floor. One
could believe anything of half the men one saw here, with their
blood-shot eyes, straggling hair, and cruel mouths. Still, I had felt
real friendliness, no counterfeit, in both Apache Kid last night and
Donoghue to-day.
A wave of disgust at my cowardice and suspicion came over me to aid me
toward the decision that my curiosity was already crying for and so,
when the day wore near an end, I set forth--for Blaine's, the
"coffee-joint."
When I got the length of Baker Street I was to see another sight such as
only the West could show. The phonographs, as usual, it being now
evening, were all grumbling forth their rival songs at the stalls and
open windows. The wonted din was in the air when suddenly an eddy began
in the crowd on the opposite sidewalk. It was in front of one of the
"toughest" saloons in town, and out of that eddy darted a man, hatless,
and broke away pell-mell along the street. Next moment the saloon door
swung again, and after him there went running another fellow, with a
tomahawk in his hand, his hair flying behind him as he ran, his legs
straddled wide to prevent him tripping up on his great spurs. Where the
third party in this scene sprang from I cannot tell. I only know that
he suddenly appeared on the street, habited in a blue serge suit, with a
Stars-and-Stripes kerchief round his slouch hat in place of a band, and
a silver star on his breast. It was my friend the portly, fatherly,
stern sheriff.
"Stop, you!" he cried.
But he with the tomahawk paid no heed, and out shot the sheriff's leg
and tripped the man up. The tomahawk flew from his hand and buried
itself almost to the end of the handle in the dust of the road.
"Stop, you!" cried the sheriff again to the other fellow, who was still
posting on. But the fugitive gave only a quick glance over his shoulder
and accelerated his speed. It looked as though he would escape, when
down flew the sheriff's hand to his belt, then up above his head. He
thrust out his chin vindictively, down came his revolver hand in a
half-circle and--it was just as though he pointed at the flying man with
his weapon--"flash!" The man took one step more, but not a second. His
leg was shot, and he fell. A waggon had stopped on the roadway, the
teamster looking on, and him the sheriff immediately pressed into
service. The man of the tomahawk rose, and, at a word from the man of
law-and-order, climbed into the waggon; he of the shot leg was assisted
to follow; the sheriff mounted beside them, and with a brief word to the
teamster away went the waggon in a cloud of dust, and whirled round the
corner to the court-house. And then the crowd in the street moved on as
usual, the talk buzzed, the cigar smoke crept overhead.
"Would n't that jar you?" said a voice in my ear, and turning I found
Donoghue by my side. "Just toddling down to Blaine's?"
"Yes," I said, and fell in step with him.
Certainly this little incident I had witnessed on the way reassured me
to the extent of making me think that if I was to be shot in the
"coffee-joint," there was a lively sheriff in the town, and unless my
demise was kept unconscionably quiet he would be by the way of making
inquiries.
With no trepidation at all, then, on reading the sign "H. B. Blaine.
Makes you think of Home and Mother," I followed Donoghue into the
sweet-scented "joint" with the gleaming coffee urn in the window.
He nodded to the gentleman who stood behind the doughnut-heaped
counter--H. B. Blaine, I presumed--who jerked his head towards the rear
of the establishment.
"Step right in, Mr. Donoghue," he said. "Apache Kid is settin' there."
*CHAPTER V*
_*I Agree to "Keep the Peace" in a New Sense*_
It was at once evident that I was not to be murdered in H. B. Blaine's
place, and also evident that I had been invited to meet Apache Kid to
hear some matter that was not for all to hear; for immediately on our
entering the little rear room he flung aside a paper he had been reading
and leaped to his feet to meet us. He put a hand on Donoghue's shoulder
and the other he extended to me.
"We'll not talk here," he said. "Walls have ears:" and so we all turned
about and marched out again.
"Going out for a strowl?" asked Blaine.
"Yes," said Apache. "Fine night for a strowl." And we found ourselves
on the street down which we turned and walked in silence.
Suddenly Apache Kid slowed down and swore to himself.
"I should n't have said that!" he remarked angrily.
"Said what?" Donoghue interrogated.
"O! mocked Blaine like that--said we were going for a strowl."
"What do you mean?" asked Donoghue, whose ear did not seem very acute.
Apache looked at him with a relieved expression.
"Well, that's hopeful," he said. "Perhaps Blaine would n't catch it
either. Still, still, I should n't have mocked him. You noticed, I
bet?" he said to me.
"Strowl?" I inquired.
He sighed.
"There 's no sense in trying to make fun of anything in a man's clothes
or talk or manner. Besides, it's excessively vulgar, excessively
vulgar."
"Here 's an interesting 'bad man,'" I mused; but there was no more said
till we won clear of the town, quite beyond the last sidewalks that
stretched and criss-crossed among the rocks and sand, marking out the
prospective streets. There, on a little rising place of sand and rocks,
we sat down.
It was a desolate spot. A gentle wind was blowing among the dunes and
the sand was all moving, trickling down here and piling up there. Being
near sunset the cicadi had disappeared and the evening light falling wan
on the occasional tufts of sage-brush gave them a peculiar air of
desolation. Donoghue pulled out a clasp-knife and sat progging in the
sand with it, and then Apache Kid jerked up his head and smiled on me, a
smile entirely friendly. And suddenly as he looked at me his face
became grave.
"Have you had supper yet?" he asked.
"No," I said. "It's early yet."
He looked at me keenly and then: "You 'll excuse me remarking on your
appearance, but you look extraordinarily tired."
"Oh," said I, lightly, "I have not been feeling just up to the scratch
and--well, I thought I 'd try the fasting cure."
He hummed to himself and dived a hand into his trousers pocket and held
out a five-dollar bill under my nose.
"There," he said, "go and eat and don't lie any more. I 've been there
myself--when I was new to the country and could n't get into its ways."
There was something of such intense warm-heartedness behind the
peremptory tones (while Donoghue turned his face aside, running the sand
between his fingers and looking foolishly at it) that to tell you the
truth, I found the tears in my eyes before I was aware. But this sign
of weakness Apache Kid made pretence not to observe.
"We 'll wait here for you till you get fed," said he, examining the back
of his hand.
"No, no," I answered hastily, "I had rather hear what you have to say
just now." Thank him for his kindness I could not, for I felt that
thanks would but embarrass him. "To tell you the truth, the mere
knowledge that I need not go to bed hungry is sufficient."
"Well," said he, looking up when my voice rang firm. "The fact is, I am
going to offer you a job; but it is a job you might not care to take
unless you were hard pressed; so you will please consider that a loan,
not a first instalment, and the fact of settling it must not influence."
This was very fairly spoken and I felt that I should say something
handsome, but he gave me no opportunity, continuing at once: "Donoghue
here and I are wanting a partner on an expedition that we are going on.
We 're very old friends, we two, but for quite a little while back we
had both been meditating going on this expedition separately. Fact is,
we are such very old friends and know each other's weaknesses so well
that, though we both had the idea of the expedition in our heads, we did
n't care about going together."
All this he spoke as much to Donoghue as to me, with a bantering air;
and one thing at least I learned from this--the reason why these two had
not done as Laughlin thought the natural thing for them to do, namely,
to go out together, heedless of Canlan. For I had no doubt whatever
that the expedition was to the Lost Cabin Mine. That was as clear as
the sun. Further observation of their natures, if further observation I
was to have, might explain their long reluctance to "go partners" on the
venture, a reluctance now evidently overcome.
"Get to your job," growled Donoghue, "and quit palaver."
It was evident that Apache Kid was determined not to permit himself to
be irritated, for he only smiled on Donoghue's snarl and turned to me:
"My friend Donoghue and I," said he, "it is necessary to explain, are
such very old friends that we can cordially hate each other."
"At times," interjected Donoghue.
"Yes; upon occasion," said Apache Kid. "To you, new to this country,
such a state of things between friends may be scarcely comprehensible,
but----" and Apache Kid stopped.
"It's them mountains that does it," said Donoghue, with a heavy frown.
"Them mountains, as Donoghue says; that's it. It's queer how the
mountains, when you get among them, seem to creep in all round you and
lock you up. It does n't take long among them with a man to know whether
you and he belong to the same order and breed. There are men who can
never sleep under the same blanket; yes, never sleep on the same side of
the fire; never, after two days in the hills, ride side by side, but
must get space between them."
His eyes were looking past me on things invisible to me, looking in
imagination, I suppose, on his own past from which he spoke.
"And if you don't like your partner, you know it then," Donoghue said.
"You go riding along and if he speaks to you, you want him to shut it.
And if he don't speak, you ask him what in thunder he's broodin' about.
And you look for him to fire up at you then, and if he don't, you feel
worse than ever and go along with just a little hell burning against him
in here," and he tapped his chest. "You could turn on him and eat him;
yes siree, kill him with your teeth in his neck."
"This is called the return to Nature," said Apache Kid, calmly.
"Return to hell!" cried Donoghue, and Apache Kid inclined his head in
acquiescence. He seemed content to let Donoghue now do the talking.
"Apache and me has come to an agreement, as he says, to go out on the
trail, and though we 've chummed together a heap----"
"In the manner of wolves," said Apache, with a half sneer.
"Yes," said Donoghue, "a good bit like that, too. Well, but on this
trail we can't go alone. It's too all-fired far and too all-fired
lonely."
His gaze wandered to the mountains behind the town and Apache took up
the discourse.
"You see the idea? We want a companion to help us to keep the peace.
Foolish--eh? Well, I don't blame you if you don't quite understand. You
're new here. You 've never been in the mountains, day in day out, with
a man whose soul an altogether different god or devil made; with a man
that you fervently hope, if there's any waking up after the last kick
here, you won't find in your happy hunting-ground beyond. You won't
have to come in between and hold us apart, you know. The mere presence
of a third party is enough."
He looked on me keenly a space and added:
"Somehow I think that you will do more than keep off the bickering
spirit. I think you 'll establish amicable relations."
It was curious to observe how the illiterate Donoghue took his partner's
speech so much for granted.
"What's amicable?" he said.
"Friendly," said Apache Kid.
"Amicable, friendly," said Donoghue, thoughtfully. "Good word,
amicable."
"The trip would be worth a couple of hundred dollars to you," said
Apache, with his eyes on mine. "And if we happened to be out over two
months, at the rate of a hundred a month for the time beyond."
"Well, that's straight enough talk, I guess," said Donoghue. "Is the
deal on?"
My financial condition itself was such as to preclude any doubt. Had I
been told plainly that it was to the Lost Cabin Mine we were going and
been offered a share in it I would, remembering Apache Kid and Donoghue
of the verandah, as I may put it, in distinction from Apache Kid and
Donoghue of to-night--well, I would have feared that some heated sudden
turn of mind of one or the other or both of these men might prevent me
coming into my own. Donoghue especially had a fearsome face to see. But
there was no such suggestion. I was offered two hundred dollars and,
now that the night fell and the silence deepened and the long range of
hills gloomed on us, I thought I could understand that the presence of a
third man might be well worth two hundred dollars to two men of very
alien natures among the silence and the loneliness that would throw them
together closely whether they would or not.
"The deal is on," I said.
We shook hands solemnly then and Donoghue looked toward Apache Kid as
though all the programme was not yet completed. Apache Kid nodded and
produced a roll of bills. The light was waning and he held them close
to him as he withdrew one.
"That'll make us square again," he said, handing me the roll. "I 've
kept off a five; so now we 're not obliged to each other for anything."
And then, as though to seal the compact and bear in upon me a thought of
the expedition we were going upon, the sun disappeared behind the
western hills and from somewhere out there, in the shadows and deeper
shadows of the strange piled landscape, came a long, faint sound, half
bay, half moan. It was the dusk cry of the mountain coyotes; and either
the echo of it or another cry came down from the hills beyond the city,
only the hum of which we heard there. And when that melancholy cry, or
echo, had ended, a cold wind shuddered across the land; all that
loneliness, that by day seemed to lure one ever with its sunlit peaks
and its blue, meditative hollows, seemed now a place of terrors and
strange occurrences; but the lure was still there, only a different
lure,--a lure of terror and darkness instead of romance and sunlight.
*CHAPTER VI*
_*Farewell to Baker City*_
We all came to our feet then, Apache Kid carefully flicking the sand
from his clothing.
"Now," he said, "that settles us. We 're quits." And we all walked
slowly and silently back in company toward the city. When we came to
Blaine's "coffee-joint" Apache Kid stopped, and told me he would see me
later in the evening at the Laughlin House to arrange about the starting
out on our venture. Donoghue wanted him to go on with him, but Apache
Kid said he must see Blaine again before leaving the city.
"I desire to leave a good impression of myself behind me," he said with
a laugh. "I should like Blaine to feel sorry to hear of my demise when
that occurs, and as things stand I don't think he 'd care, to use the
language of the country, a continental cuss."
So saying, with a wave of his hand, he entered Blaine's.
At Baker Street corner Donoghue stopped.
"I 'll be seeing you two days from now," he said.
"Do we not start for two days then?" I asked.
"O, Apache Kid will see you to-night and make all the arrangements about
pulling out. So-long, just now."
So I went on to my hotel and, thus rescued from poverty on the very day
that I had the first taste of it, I felt very much contented and
cheered, and it was with a light and hopeful heart that I wandered out,
after my unusually late supper, along the waggon road as far as the
foothill woods and back, breathing deep of the thin air of night and
rejoicing in the starlight.
When I returned to the hotel there was a considerable company upon the
rear verandah, as I could see from quite a distance--dim, shadowy forms
sprawled in the lounge chairs with the yellow-lit and open door behind
shining out on the blue night, and over them was the lamp that always
hung there in the evenings, where the parrot's cage hung by day.
When I came on to the verandah I picked out Apache Kid at once.
A man who evidently did not know him was saying:
"What do you wear that kerchief for, sir, hanging away down your neck
that way?"
There were one or two laughs of other men, who thought they were about
to see a man quietly baited. But Apache Kid was not the man to stand
much baiting, even of a mild stamp.
I think few of the men there, however, understood the nature that
prompted him when he turned slowly in his chair and said:
"Well, sir, I wear it for several reasons."
"Oh! What's them?"
"Well, the first reason is personal--I like to wear it."
There was a grin still on the face of the questioner. He found nothing
particularly crushing in this reply, but Apache went on softly: "Then
again, I wear it so as to aid me in the study of the character of the
men I meet."
"O! How do you work that miracle?"
"Well, when I meet a man who does n't seem to see anything strange in my
wearing of the kerchief I know he has travelled a bit and seen the like
elsewhere in our democratic America. Other men look at it and I can see
they think it odd, but they say nothing. Well, that is a sign to me
that they have not travelled where the handkerchief is used in this way,
but I know that they are gentlemen all the same."
There was a slight, a very slight, exulting note in his voice and I saw
the faces of the men on the outside of the crowd turn to observe the
speaker. I thought the man who had set this ball a-rolling looked a
trifle perturbed, but Apache was not looking at him. He lay back in his
chair, gazing before him with a calm face. "Then again," he said
leisurely, as though he had the whole night to himself, "if I meet a man
who sees it and asks why I wear it, I know that he is the sort of man
about whom people say here,--in the language of the country,--'Don't
worry about him; he 's a hog from Ontario and never been out of the bush
before!'"
There was a strained silence after these words. Some of the more
self-reliant men broke it with a laugh. The most were silent.
"I'm a hog--eh? You call me a hog?" cried the man, after looking on the
faces of those who sat around. I think he would have swallowed Apache
Kid's speech without a word of reply had it not been spoken before so
large an audience.
"I did not say so," said Apache Kid, "but if I were you, I would n't
make things worse by getting nasty. I tried to josh a man myself this
afternoon, and do you know what I did? I called in on him to-night to
see whether he had savveyed that I had been trying to josh him. I found
out that he had savveyed, and do you know what I did? I apologised to
him----"
"D' ye think I 'm going to apologise for askin' you that question?"
"You interrupt me," said Apache Kid. "I apologised to him, I was going
to say, like a man. As to whether I think you are going to apologise or
not--no."
He turned and scrutinised the speaker from head to toe and back again.
"No," he repeated decidedly. "I should be very much surprised if you
did."
"By Moses!" cried the man. "You take the thing very seriously. I only
asked you----" and his voice grumbled off into incoherence.
"Yes," said Apache Kid. "I have a name for being very serious. Perhaps
I did answer your question at too great length, however."
He turned for another scrutiny of his man, and broke out with such a
peal of laughter, as he looked at him, that every one else followed
suit; and the "josher," with a crestfallen look, rose and went indoors.
I was still smiling when Apache Kid came over to me.
"Could you be ready to go out to-morrow at noon on the Kettle River Gap
stage?" he asked quietly.
"Certainly," said I. "We don't start from here, then?"
"No. That's to say, we don't leave the haunts of men here. It is
better not, for our purpose. Have you seen Canlan to-night?"
I told him no, but that I had been out for my evening constitutional and
not near the city.
"He does n't seem to be at this hotel to-night. I must go out and try
to rub shoulders with him if he's in town. If I see him anywhere around
town, I may not come back here to-night. If I don't see him, I 'll look
in here later in the hope of rubbing against him. So if you don't see
me again to-night, you 'll understand. To-morrow at noon, the Kettle
River Gap stage."
But neither Apache Kid nor Canlan put in an appearance all evening, and
so I judged that elsewhere my friend had "rubbed against" Canlan.
I was astonished to find on the morrow that I had, somewhere within me,
a touch of fondness for Baker City, after all, despitefully though it
had used me.
"You should stay on a bit yet," said Mrs. Laughlin, when I told her I
was going. "You can't expect just to fall into a good job right away on
striking a new town."
"I should never have come here," I explained, "had it not been that I
had a letter to a gentleman who was once in the city. The fact is, my
people at home did not like the thought of me going out on speck, and
the only man in the country I knew was in Baker City. But he had moved
on before I arrived."
"And where do you think of going now?" she asked.
I evaded a direct answer, and yet answered truthfully:
"Where I wanted to go was into a ranching country. Mining never took my
fancy. I believe there are some ranches on the Kettle River."
"Oh, a terrible life!" she cried out. "They 're a tough lot, them
Kettle River boys. They 're mostly all fellows that have been
cattle-punching and horse-wrangling all their lives. They come from
other parts where the country is getting filled up with grangers and
sheepmen. I reckon it's because they feel kind o' angry at their job in
life being kind o' took from them by the granger and the sheepmen that
they 're so tough. Oh! they 're a tough lot; and they 've got to be, to
hold their own. Why, only the other day there a flock o' sheep came
along on the range across the Kettle. There was three shepherds with
them, and a couple of Colonel Ney's boys out and held them up. The
sheep-herders shot one, and the other went home for the other boys, all
running blood from another shot, and back they went, and laid out them
three shepherds--just laid them out, my boy (d'ye hear?)--and ran the
whole flock o' sheep over into a canon one atop the other. Ney and the
rest only wants men that can look after their rights that way----"
How long she might have continued, kindly enough, to seek to dissuade
me, I do not know. But I was forced to interrupt her and remind her I
should lose the stage.
"Yes," she said, "I might just have kept my mouth shut and saved my
breath. You lads is all the same. But mind what I say," she cried after
me, "you should stay on here and rustle yourself a good job. You 're
just going away to 'get it in the neck.' Maybe you 'll come back here
again, sick and sorry. But seein' you 're going, God bless you, my lad!"
and I was astonished to see her green eyes moist, and a soft, tender
light on her lean, freckled face.
"So-long, then, lad, and good luck to you," said her better half. "If
you strike into Baker City again--don't forget the Laughlin House."
I was already in the street, half turning to hear their parting words,
and with a final wave I departed, and (between you and me) there was a
lump in my throat, and I thought that the Laughlin House was not such a
bad sort of place at all to tarry in.
In Baker Street, at the very corner, I saw Apache Kid advancing toward
me, but he frowned to me and, when he raised his hand to his mouth to
remove his cigar, for a brief moment he laid a finger on his lip, and as
he passed me, looking on the ground and walking slowly, he said: "You go
aboard the stage yourself and go on."
There was no time to say more in passing, and I wondered what might be
the meaning of this. But when I came to where the stage-coach stood,
there was Canlan among the little knot of idlers who were watching it
preparing for the road. He saw me when I climbed aboard, and, stepping
forward, held out his hand. "Hullo, kid," he said, "pulling out?"
"Yes," said I.
"Goin' to pastures green?"
I nodded.
"Well, I want to thank you. I bin keepin' my eyes open for you since
that night. I want to thank you for that service you done me. Any time
you want a----" but I did not catch his last words. The driver had
mounted the box, gathered up the "ribbons," sprung back the brake, and
with a sudden leap forward we were off in a whirl of dust. I nodded my
head vigorously to Canlan, glad enough to see that he was only anxious
to be friendly and to thank me for the service I had rendered him
instead of embarrassing me with questions as to my destination.
Away we went along Baker Street and shot out of the town, and there,
just at the turning of the road, was Apache Kid by the roadside, and he
stood aside to let the horses pass. The driver looked over his shoulder
to make sure that he got on safely, but there was no need to stop the
horses, for with a quick snatch Apache Kid leapt aboard and sat down,
hot, and breathing a little short, beside me.
*CHAPTER VII*
_*The Man with the Red Head*_
Of two incidents that befell on the journey to Camp Kettle, I must tell
you; of the first because it showed me Apache Kid's bravery and calm;
and that the first of these two noteworthy incidents befell at the "Rest
Hotel" where we had "twenty minutes for supper" while the monster
head-lamps were lit for the night journey; for between Baker City and
Camp Kettle there was one "all-night division," as it was called.
Apache Kid, after getting into the stage, sat silent for a much longer
time than it took him to regain his wind. The high speed of travel with
which we started was not kept up all the way, needless to say, such
bursts being spectacular affairs for departures and arrivals. But with
our six horses we nevertheless made good travel.
Occasional trivialities of talk were exchanged between the
travellers--there were three others besides ourselves--and Apache Kid
gave no indication by his manner that he and I were in any way specially
connected. It was amusing indeed how he acted the part of one making
friendly advances to me as though to a mere fellow-voyager, including me
in his comments on the road, the weather, the coyotes that stood
watching us passing with bared teeth and ugly grin. Later, when one of
the others fell asleep and the remaining two struck up a conversation,
he remarked:
"Well, that was a hot run I had. Whenever I turned the far corner of
Baker Street I took to my heels, doubled back behind the block, and
sprinted the whole length of the town. I had to tell another lie,
however, for I saw Canlan in Baker Street, just when I was thinking of
getting aboard the stage. The driver was in having a drink before
starting and, so as to prevent him raising questions about my
blanket-roll lying in the stage and me not being there, I told him I had
forgotten something at this end of the town and that I would run along
and get the business done, and he could pick me up in passing. Lucky he
did n't come out then or he would have wondered at the direction I took.
You had n't turned up, you see, and I knew I must let you know that it
was all right."
He paused and added: "But from to-day, no more lying. I don't want when
I come into this kingdom of mine to feel that I've got it at the expense
of a hundred cowardly prevarications."
He sat considering a little while.
"If Canlan should by any chance get wind of our departure and follow
up----" he began, and then closed his teeth sharply.
"What then?" I asked.
"He 'd be a dead man," said he, "and a good riddance to the world."
"I 'd think murder worse than lying," said I.
"Tut, tut!" said he. "You look at this from a prejudiced standpoint.
Donoghue and I are going out to a certain goal. We 've arranged to win
something for ourselves. Well, we 're not going to win it with
humbugging and lying. Where speech would spoil--we 'll be silent;
otherwise we 're going to walk up like men and claim what's coming to
us, to use the phrase of the country. Heavens! When I think of what I
've seen, and been, and done, and then think of all this crawling way of
going about anything--it makes me tired, to use the----" and he muttered
the rest as though by force of habit but knowing it quite unnecessary to
say.
There was nothing startling on our journey till the incident befell
which I promised to tell you. It was when we came to the Rest House, a
two-storey frame house, with a planking built up in front of it two
storeys higher, with windows painted thereon in black on a white
background, making it look, from the road, like a four-storey building.
When we dismounted there one of the men on the coach said to the
proprietor, who had come out to the door: "What's the colour of your
hash slinger? Still got that Chink?"
"I 've still got the Chinaman waiter, sir," replied the proprietor, in a
loud, determined voice, "and if you don't like to have him serve
you--well you can----"
"I intend to," said the man, a big, red-faced, perspiring fellow with
bloodshot eyes. "I intend to. I 'll do the other thing, as you were
about to say;" and he remained seated in the coach, turning his broad
back on the owner of the Rest Hotel.
"I won't eat here, either," said Apache Kid to me, "not so much from
desiring in Rome to do as the Romans do, as because I likewise object to
the Chink, as he is called. You see, he works for what not even a white
woman of the most saving kind could live upon. But there is such a
peculiarly fine cocktail to be had in this place that I cannot deny
myself it. Come," and we passed wide around the heels of four restive
cow ponies that were hitched at the door, with lariats on their
saddle-pommels and Winchester rifles in the side-buckets.
"Some cowboys in here," said Apache Kid, "up from Ney's place likely,
after strayed stock," and he led the way to the bar, and seemed rather
aggrieved for a moment that I drew the line at cocktails.
When we entered the bar-room I noticed a man who turned to look at us
remain gazing, not looking away as did the others. Instead, he bored
Apache Kid with a pair of very keen grey eyes.
Apache evidently was known to the barman, who chatted to him easily
while concocting the drink of which I had heard such a good account, and
both seemed oblivious to the other occupants of the room. A flutter of
air made me look round to the door again. Apache Kid had said no word of
Donoghue, but I remembered Donoghue's remark as to seeing me later, in a
day or two, and half expected him to appear here. But the door was not
opening to a newcomer. Instead, the man who had cast so keen a look on
my friend was going out, and as he went he glanced backwards toward
Apache Kid again.
I stepped up to Apache Kid and said: "I don't like the manner of that
man who went out just now. I'm sure he means mischief of some kind. He
gave you a mighty queer look."
"What was he like?" Apache asked, and I described him, but apparently
without waking any memory or recognition in Apache's mind.
"Who was that who went out?" he asked, turning to the barman.
"Did n't observe, sir," was the reply.
"O! Thought I knew his----" Apache Kid began, and then said suddenly,
as though annoyed at himself: "No, I 'm damned if I did--did n't think
anything of the kind. Did n't even see him."
The barman smiled, and as Apache Kid moved along the counter away from
us to scrutinise an announcement posted on the wall, said quietly: "He
don't look as if he hed bin drinkin' too much. Strange how it affects
different men; some in the face, some in the legs. Some keep quite
fresh looking, but when they talk they just talk no manner of sense at
all."
I could have explained what was "wrong" with Apache Kid, but it was not
necessary. Instead, I stepped back and took my seat with what the
barman called, with a slight sneer, my "soft drink."
Apache Kid turned about and leant upon the counter. He sipped his
cocktail with evident relish, and suddenly the door flew open. Those in
the room were astonished, for the newcomer had in his grasp one of those
heavy revolvers,--a Colt,--and he was three paces into the room and had
his weapon levelled on Apache Kid before we had recovered from our
surprise.
"Well!" he cried, "I have you now!" and behind him in the doorway, the
door being slightly ajar, I caught a glimpse of the man who had gone out
so surreptitiously a few moments before.
Apache Kid's eyes were bright, but there seemed no fear on his face; I
could see none.
"You have me now," he said quietly.
The man behind the gun, a tall fellow with close-cropped red hair,
lowered his revolver hand.
"I 've waited a while for this," he said.
"Yes," said Apache Kid. "To me it is incomprehensible that a man's
memory should serve so long; but you have the drop on me." Here came a
smile on his lips, and I had a suspicion that it was a forced smile; but
to smile at all in such a pass I thought wonderful. "You have the drop
on me, Jake,--in the language of the country."
The man Jake lowered his hand wholly then.
"You can come away with that old gag of yourn about the language o' the
country, and you right up against it like this? No, Apache Kid, I
can't--say!" he broke off, "are you heeled?"
And I thought to myself: "In the language of the country that means,
'are you armed?'"
"I am not," said Apache, lightly.
The red-headed man--he looked like a cattleman, for he wore skin
leggings over his trousers and spurs to his high-heeled boots--sent his
revolver down with a jerk into the holster at his hip.
"I can't do it," he said. "You 're too gritty a man for me to put out
that way."
There was a quick jingle of his spurs, and he was gone.
A long sigh filled the room.
"A gritty man, right enough," said one man near by. "A pair of gritty
men, I 'm thinking."
Apache Kid drained his glass, and I heard him say to the barman:
"Well, he 's no coward. A coward would have shot whenever he stepped in
at the door, and given me no chance. And even if he had n't done that,"
he continued, arguing the thing aloud, in a way I had already recognised
as natural to him, as though he must scrutinise and diagnose everything,
"even if he had made up his mind to let me off, he would have backed out
behind his gun for fear of me. No, he 's not a coward."
"But you told him you were n't heeled," said the barman.
"Oh! But I might have been lying," said Apache Kid, and frowned.
"He was n't lying, I bet," said the man near me. "A cool man like that
there don't lie. It's beneath him to lie."
But Apache Kid did not seem to relish the gaze of the room, and turned
his back on it and on me, leaning his elbows on the bar again and
engaging in talk with the barman, who stood more erect now, I thought,
and held his head higher, with the air of a man receiving some high
honour.
And just then, "All aboard!" we heard the stage-driver intone at the
door.
When we came forth again there were only two horses before the hotel.
"The red-headed man and his friend are gone," thought I, as I climbed to
my place, and away we lumbered through the night, the great headlights
throwing their radiance forward on the road in overlapping cones that
sped before us, the darkness chasing us up behind.
*CHAPTER VIII*
_*What Befell at the Half-Way House*_
Of the second incident that befell on the journey to Camp Kettle I must
tell you because it had a far-reaching effect and a good deal more to do
with our expedition than could possibly have been foretold at the time.
Of the incident at the Rest House, which I have just narrated, Apache
Kid said nothing, and as curiosity is not one of my failings (many
others though I have), to question I never dreamt; and besides, in the
West, even the inquisitive learn to listen without inquiring, and he
evidently had no intention of explaining. But when, at last, after a
very long silence during which our three fellow-travellers looked at him
in the dusk of the coach (whose only light was that reflected from the
lamp-lit road) with interest, and admiration, I believe, he said in a
low voice which I alone could hear, owing to the creaking and screaming
of the battered vehicle: "I think you and I had better be strangers;
only fellow-travellers thrown together by chance, not fellow-plotters
journeying together with design."
"I understand," said I, and this resolution we accordingly carried out.
After a night and a day's journey, with only short stops for watering
and "snatch meals," we were hungry and sleepily happy and tired when we
came to the "Half-Way-to-Kettle Hotel" standing up white-painted and
sun-blistered in the midst of the sand and sage-brush; and I, for my
part, paid little heed to the hangers-on who watched our arrival,
several of whom stretched hands simultaneously for the honour of
catching the reins which the driver flung aside in his long-practised,
aggressive manner--a manner without which he had seemed something less
than a real stage-driver.
I noticed that Apache Kid had taken his belt and revolver from his
blanket-roll and now, indeed, was "heeled" for all men to see, for it
was a heavy Colt he used.
Indoors were tables set, in a room at one side of the entrance, with
clean, white table-cloths and a young woman waiting to attend our wants
after we had washed the dust of the way from our faces and hands and
brushed the grit from our clothes with a horse brush which hung in the
cool though narrow hall-way.
Apache Kid sat at one table, I at another, two of our fellow-voyagers at
a third. The remaining traveller announced to the bearded proprietor
who stood at the door, in tones of something very like pride, that he
wanted no supper except half a pound of cheese, a bottle of pickles, and
a medium bottle of whisky.
This request, to my surprise, was received without the slightest show of
astonishment; indeed, it seemed to mark the speaker out for something of
a great man in the eyes of the proprietor who, with a "Very good,
sir--step into the bar-room, sir," ushered the red-eyed man into the
chamber to right, a dim-lit place in which I caught the sheen of glasses
with their pale reflection in the dark-stained tables on which they
stood.
In the dining-room I found my eyes following the movements of the young
woman who attended there. A broad-shouldered lass she was, and the first
thing about her that caught me, that made me look upon her with
something of contentment after our dusty travel, was, I think, her clean
freshness. She wore a white blouse, or, I believe, to name that article
of apparel rightly, with the name she would have used, a "shirt-waist."
It fitted close at her wrists which I noticed had a strong and gladsome
curve. The dress she wore was of dark blue serge. She was what we men
call "spick and span" and open-eyed and honest, with her exuberant hair
tidily brushed back and lying in the nape of her neck softly, with a
golden glint among the dark lustre of it as she passed the side window
through which the golden evening sunlight streamed. I had been long
enough in the country to be not at all astonished with the bearing, as
of almost reverence, with which the men treated her, tagging a "miss" to
the end of their every sentence. The stage-driver, too, for all he was
so terrible and important a man, "missed" her and "if you pleased" her
to the verge of comicality.
I think she herself had a sense of humour, for I caught a twinkle in her
eye as she journeyed to and fro. That she did so without affectation
spoke a deal for her power over her pride. A woman in such a place, I
should imagine, must constantly find it advisable to remind herself that
there are very few of the gentler sex in the land and a vast number of
men, and tell herself that it is not her captivating ways alone that are
responsible for the extreme of respect that is lavished upon her. She
chatted to all easily and pleasantly, with a sparkle in her wide-set
eyes.
"I think I remember of you on the way up to Baker City," she said:
"about two months ago, wasn't it?"
And when I had informed her that it was even so she asked me how I had
fared there. I told her I thought I might have fared better had I been
in a ranching country.
"Can you ride?" she asked.
I told her no--at least, not in the sense of the word here. I could
keep a seat on some horses, but the horses I had seen here were such as
made me consider myself hardly a "rider" at all.
She thought it "great," she said, to get on horseback and gallop "to the
horizon and back," as she put it.
"It makes you feel so free and glad all over."
I would soon learn, she said, but "the boys" would have their fun with
me to start.
All this was a broken talk, between her attending on the tables; and as
she kept up a conversation at each table as she visited it I could not
help considering that her mind must be particularly alert. Perhaps it
was these rides "to the horizon and back" that kept her mind so agile
and her form and face so pure. It was when she was bringing me my last
course, a dish of apricots, that a man with a rolling gait, heavy brows,
and red, pluffy hands, a big, unwieldy man in a dark, dusty suit, came
in and sat down at my table casting his arm over the back of the chair.
This fellow "my deared" her instead of following the fashion of the
rest, and surveyed me, with his great head flung back and his bulgy eyes
travelling over me in an insolent fashion. When she returned with his
first order he put up his hand and chucked her under the chin, as it is
called.
"Sir," said she, with a pucker in her brows, "I have told you before
that I did n't like that:" and she turned away.
My vis-a-vis at that turned to his soup, first glancing at me and
winking, and then bending over his plate he supped with great
noise,--something more than "audible" this,--and perennial suckings of
his moustache.
When the maid came again at his rather peremptory rattle on the plate,
"Angry?" he asks, and then "Tuts! should n't be angry," and he made as
though to embrace her waist, but she stepped back.
He turned to me, and, wagging his head toward her, remarked:
"She does n't cotton to me."
I make no reply, looking blankly in his face as though I would say: "I
don't want anything to do with you"--just like that.
"Ho!" he said, and blew through his nose at me, thrusting out his wet
moustache. "Are you deaf or saucy?"
I looked at him then alert, and rapped out sharply: "I had rather not
speak to you at all, sir. But as to your remark, I am not astonished
that the young lady does not cotton to you."
With the tail of my eye, as the phrase is, I knew that there was a
turning of faces toward me then, and my lady drew herself more erect.
"Ho!" cried the bully. "Here's a fane how-de-do about nothing! You
want to learn manners, young man. I reckon you have n't travelled much,
else you would know that gentlemen setting down together at table are
not supposed to be so mighty high-toned as to want nothin' to do with
each other."
I heard him to an end, and, laying down my spoon, "With gentlemen--yes,"
I said, "there can be no objection to talk, even though your remark is
an evasion of the matter at present. But seeing you have gone out of
your way to blame my manners, I will make bold to say I don't like
yours."
The girl stepped forward a pace and, "Sir, sir," she began to me and the
bully was glaring on me and crying out, "Gentlemen! 'between gentlemen'
you say, and what you insinuate with that?"
But I waved aside the girl and to him I began:
"I have been in this country some time, sir, and I may tell you that I
find you at the top of one list in my mental notes. Up to to-night I
have never seen a woman insulted in the West----" and then, as is a way
I have and I suppose shall have a tendency to till the end of my days,
though I ever strive to master it (and indeed find the periods between
the loss of that mastery constantly lengthening), I suddenly "flared
up."
To say more in a calm voice was beyond me and I cried out: "But I want
no more talk from you, sir; understand that."
"Ho!" he began. "You----"
But I interrupted him with: "No more, sir; understand!"
And then in a tone which I dare say savoured very much as though I
thought myself quite a little ruler of men, I said: "I have told you
twice now not to say more to me. I only tell you once more."
"Good Lord!" he cried. "Do you think you can scare me?"
"That's the third time," said I, mastering the quaver of excitement in
my voice, lest he should take it for a quaver of fear. "Next time I
don't speak at all."
"Maybe neither do I," said he, and he lifted the water carafe as though
to throw the contents on me, but he never did so; for I leant quickly
across the table and with the flat of my hand slapped him soundly on the
cheek, as I might have slapped a side of bacon, and, "That," said I, "is
for insulting the lady."
It was "clear decks for action" then, for he flung back his chair and,
spinning around the end of the table, aimed a blow at me; but I had
scarce time to guard, so quick was he for all his size. I took the
simplest guard of all--held my left arm out rigidly, the fist clenched,
and when he lunged forward to deliver the blow I ducked my shoulder but
kept my fist still firm.
It was a fierce blow that he aimed, but it slipped over my shoulder and
then there was an unpleasant sound--a soft, sloppy sound--for his nose
and my rigid fist had met. Then the blood came, quite a fountain. But
this only heated him and he dealt another blow which I received with the
"cross-guard," one of the best guards in the "straight on" system of
boxing, a system generally belittled, but very useful to know.
I think he had never seen the guard in his life, there was so astonished
a look on his face; but before he recovered I had him down with a jar on
the floor so that the floor and windows rattled,--and his brains, too, I
should imagine.
He sat up glaring but something dazed and shaken. God forgive me that I
have so feeble a control of my passions once they are roused and such a
horrible spirit of exultation! These have their punishment, of course,
for a man who exults over such a deed, instead of leaving it to the
onlookers to congratulate, falls in their estimation.
However, to give over moralising, I cried out, as he sat up there on the
floor with the blood on his face and chin and trickling on his thick
neck: "Come on! Sit up! If you lie malingering, I 'll kick you to your
feet! I 'm only beginning on you."
I think the onlookers must have smiled to hear me, for, though so far I
had got the better, the match was an absurd one. But my foe was a man
of a bad spirit; without rising he flung his hand round to his hip.
I had a quick glimpse of the girl clasping her hands and heard the gasp
of her breath and her voice: "Stop that now--none of that!"
But another voice, very complacent and with a mocking, boyish ring,
broke in:
"Throw up your hands, you son of a dog!" And then I ceased to be the
centre of interest and my brain cleared, for Apache Kid was sitting at
his table, his chair pushed back a little way, his legs wide apart as he
leant forward, his left hand on the left knee, his right forearm lying
negligently on the right leg--and loosely in his hand was a revolver
pointed at the gentleman on the floor.
The other two were looking on from under their brows, the stage-driver
sitting beaming on the scene. The girl swung round on Apache with an
infinite relief discernible in her face and gesture. The cook who had
come from the rear of the room, having seen the business through the
wicket window from his pantry, I suppose, cried out: "Make him take out
his gun and hand it over, sir."
Apache did not turn at the voice, but, "You hear that piece of advice?"
said he. "Well, I 'm not going to take it. You can keep your little
toy in your hip-pocket. Do you know why? Because you can do no harm
here with it. Before you could get your hand an inch to it my Colt's
bullet would have let all the wind sighing out of your contemptible
carcass."
Then he gave a laugh, a chuckling, quiet, hearty laugh in his throat,
hardly opening his lips and added: "In the language of the country, sir,
I would advise you to shake a leg--to get up and get--hike--before I
plug you."
And up rose the man, a commercial traveller (as the girl told me
afterwards when trying to thank me--for what I cannot say, as I told her
at the time), or a "drummer," as the name is, who had been there since
yesterday's Baker-bound stage arrived, drinking at the bar and making
himself disagreeable in the dining-room.
He looked a sorry figure as he shuffled from the chamber.
I turned to Apache Kid and began: "You saved my life, A----" but his
frown reminded me that we were strangers;--"sir," I ended, "and I have
to thank you."
"That's all right, sir; that's all right, sir. Don't mention it," said
Apache Kid, throwing his revolver back into its holster.
That was the end of the drummer; we saw him no more that night, and when
we came down in the morning we were told he had gone on to Baker City
with the stage which went west earlier by an hour than the one toward
the railway, the one we were to continue in--part of its journey.
But when we came to settle our bill the proprietor drew his hand under
his long beard and put his head on the side--reminding me of a portrait
of Morris I had seen--and remarked, looking from Apache to me and back
again: "Well, gentlemen, I 'd consider it a kind of honour to be allowed
to remember that I did n't ask nothing for putting you up. I should n't
like to remember about you, any time, and to think to myself that I had
charged you up. I 'd be kind of honoured if you 'd let me remember I
did n't take nothing from you."
We did not speak, but Apache's bow was something to see, and with a
hearty shake of the hand we mounted the stage.
"Look up tew the window, my lad," said the driver, gathering up his
reins. "Look up tew the window and get what's comin' to you; a smile to
warm the cockles of your heart for the rest o' the trip."
And sure enough we had a smile and a wave of a strong and graceful hand
from the upper window and raised our hats and bowed and were granted
another wave and another also from the proprietor--and a wave from the
cook at the gable of the house. And looking round again, as we rolled
off, there was the fresh white girl standing at the door now.
She raised her hand to her lips and I felt a little sorry in my heart.
I did not like to think she was going to "blow a kiss:" it would be a
cheapening of herself methought. Then I felt a little regretful, for
she did not blow a kiss, but kept her hand to her mouth as long as she
remained there.
We went on in silence and then I heard Apache Kid murmur: "Did she mean
it or did she not?"
"Mean what?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" said he, alert suddenly. "Oh! I was talking to
myself:" and then he said in a louder tone: "Excuse me, sir, for asking,
but do you not carry a gun?"
"No," said I, with a smile part at this revival of his old caution and
part at something else.
"Can you shoot?"
I shook my head.
"Well," said he, "this period of the history of the West is a transition
period. The old order changeth, giving place to new. Fists are
settling trouble that was formerly settled with the gun. But the
trouble of the transition period is that you can never be sure whether
it's to be a gun or the fists. Men like that drummer, too, carry a
gun--but they carry it out of sight and you don't know it's there for
certain. I advocate the gun carried openly; and I think you should
begin right away learning its use. I must look up that remark of
Carlyle's, first time I can, about the backwoods being the place where
manners flourish. I want to see from the context if he did n't really
mean it. Most people think it was sarcasm, but if it was, it should n't
have been. Manners do flourish in all backwoods, until the police come
in and the gun goes out, and it's the presence of the gun that keeps
everybody mannerly. The gun does it. Now see--you hold a revolver like
this," and he exemplified as he spoke. "The usual method of grasping a
revolver is with the forefinger pressing the trigger, and even many
experts follow this method; but, with all due respect to the advocates
of that method, it is not the best. The best way to hold a revolver is
with the second finger pressing the trigger, the forefinger extending
along the side of the barrel like this, you see. That is the great
desideratum in endeavouring to make a shot with a revolver--keeping the
thing steady. It kicks under the muscular action required to pull the
trigger with the forefinger, and unless one is thoroughly practised the
bullet will fly above the mark aimed at. Remember, too, to grip tight,
or with these heavy guns you may get your thumb knocked out. Then you
throw your hand up and bring it down and just point at what you want to
kill--like that!"
"Biff!" went the revolver, and I saw the top leaves on a sage-brush fly
in the air.
The horses snorted and leapt forward and the driver flung a look over
his shoulder, a gleeful look, and, gathering the reins again, cried out,
"My gosh, boys! Keep it up, and we 'll make speed into Camp Kettle.
Say, this is like old days!" he cried again, when Apache Kid snapped a
second time and we went rocking onward.
So we "kept it up," Apache indicating objects for me to aim at, watching
my manner of aiming, and coaching me as we went. It seemed to be
infectious, for the traveller who had before kept to himself whipped out
a "gun" from some part of his clothing and potted away at the one side
while we potted at the other. The other two, the one who had suppered
on cheese, pickles, and whisky, and breakfasted on the same, like
enough, and the man with whom he had struck up an acquaintanceship,
wheeled about and potted backwards; and at that the driver grew
absolutely hilarious, got out his whip and cracked it loud as the
revolver shots, crying out now and again: "Say, this is the old times
back again!" and so we volleyed along the uneven road till dusk fell on
the mountains to north and the bronze yellow plain to south and sunset
crimsoned the western sky. And lights were just beginning to be lit
when, in a flutter of dust and banging of the leathern side-blinds and
screaming of the gritty wheels, we came rocking down the hillside into
Camp Kettle.
But at sight of that Apache Kid turned to me, and with the look of a man
suddenly recollecting, he said, in a tone of one ashamed: "Well, well!
Here we are advertising ourselves for all we 're worth, when our plan
should have been one of silence and self-effacement."
"Well," said I, "we can creep quietly up to bed when we reach the hotel
here, and let no one see us, if that is what you are anxious about."
"You 'll have no more bed now, Francis," he said quietly. "No more bed
under a roof, no more hotel now until----" and here for the first time
he acknowledged in actual, direct speech the goal of our journey, "until
we lie down to sleep with our guns in our hands and our boots on----" he
put his mouth to my ear and whispered, "in the Lost Cabin."
*CHAPTER IX*
_*First Blood*_
It would hardly astonish me, and certainly not offend me, to know that
you found a difficulty in believing possible such a sight as Camp Kettle
presented on our arrival. It made me shudder to see it, and the picture
is one that I never remember without melancholy.
"They seem to be celebrating here," said he of the red eyes as a hideous
din of shrieking and curses came up to us.
And "celebrating" they were, that day being, as Apache Kid now
recollected, the anniversary of the first discovery of mineral in that
place. Of such a kind was this celebration that the stage-driver had to
dismount and drag no fewer than three drunken men from the road, which
irritated him considerably, spoiling as it did his final dash up to the
hotel door. But it served our turn better; for here, before entering
Camp Kettle, we alighted.
Camp Kettle is built in the very midst of the woods, the old veterans of
the forest standing between the houses which stretch on either side of
the waggon road, looking across the road on each other from between the
firs, so that a traveller coming to the place by road is fairly upon it
before he is well aware. But on that day--or night--there were strips
of bunting hanging across the waggon road, not from the houses, for they
were all mere log huts, but from the trees on either side; and the
forest rang with shouting and drunken laughter. Just where we alighted
were several great, hewn stones by the roadside, with marks of much
trampling around them.
"There 's been a rock-drilling contest here," said Apache Kid, pointing
to the holes in the centre of these rocks, as we struck into the bush
and came into Kettle from behind.
Here and there, backward from the front huts, were others dotted about
in cleared spaces, and all were lit up, and doors standing open and men
coming and going, lurching among the wandering tree-roots and falling
over stumps still left there. And the whole bush round about you might
have thought the scene of a recent battle, what with the drunken men
lying here and there in all manner of attitudes, with twisted bodies and
sprawled legs.
Some few fellows in their coming and going spoke to us, crying on us to
"come and have a drink," but it was only necessary for us to move on
heedlessly so as to evade them--so dazed and puzzled were they all and
seemed to lose sight of us at once, wheeling about and crying out to the
twilit woods. At some of the cabins horses stood hitched, snorting and
quivering ever and again, their ears falling back and pricking forward
in terror.
"For once," said Apache Kid to me, "I have to be grateful for the
presence of the despised Dago and the Chinee. The Dago may be a little
fuddled, but not too much to attend to our wants in the way of horses,
and he is not likely to talk afterwards. The Chinee will be perfectly
calm among all this, and he, for a certainty, will not speak. Here's
the Chinee joint. Come along."
He thrust open the door of a long, low house and we entered into a babel
of talk, that ceased on the instant, and closed the door behind us.
We had a glimpse of a back room with a group of Chinamen who looked up
on us with eyes a trifle agitated, but, I suppose on seeing that we were
not the worse of liquor, they bent again over their tables, and we heard
the rattle of dominoes again and their quick, voluble, pattering talk.
A very staid, calm-faced Chinaman, his high forehead lit up by a lamp
which hung over a desk by which he stood, turned to us, and, looking on
us through large horn spectacles, bowed with great dignity.
"Good evening," said Apache Kid.
"Good evening," said he.
"We want three mats of rice," said Apache Kid, and this placid gentleman
called out a word or two to one of his assistants, and the rice was
hauled down from the shelf. Then we bought three small bags of flour
and two sides of bacon, and all this was tied up for us and set by the
door to await our return; and off we went out of that place with the
smell of strange Eastern spices in our nostrils.
"Not so long ago," said Apache Kid, "these fellows would not have been
tolerated here at all. Then they were allowed an entrance and
tolerated; but they only sold rice to begin with, and nothing more,
except, perhaps, cranberries, to the hotel, which they gathered on the
foothills. Now, as you see, they run a regular store. But on such
nights as this it behooves them to keep indoors lest the white populace
regret having allowed them within their gates. But John Chinaman is
very wise. He keeps out of sight when it is advisable. Here's the
livery stable."
The stout Italian who stood at the door of the stable, toying with a
cigarette, frowned on us through the darkness, and seemed a trifle
astonished, I thought, at our request for horses. But he bade us follow
him, and by the aid of two swinging lamps Apache Kid selected three
horses, two for riding and one pack-horse.
"But you ain't pull out to-night, heh?" said the Italian in his broken
English.
"Yes," said Apache.
"You going down to Placer Camp or up to mountains?"
Apache Kid was drawing the cinch tight on the pony I was to ride (the
Italian was saddling the other), and he merely turned and shot the
questioner such a look as made me feel--well, that I should not like to
be the Italian.
I thought then that, for all his slim build, this partner of mine, so
quiet, so deliberate, must have seen and done strange things in his day,
and been in peculiar corners to learn a glance like that. If ever a
look on a man's face could cow another, it was such a look as Apache Kid
flung to the Italian then.
Back to the Chinese store we went, leading our steeds, and there roped
on our pack.
"Do you sell rifles?" asked Apache Kid.
"Yes, sir, vely good line," and so Apache added a Winchester, which was
thrust atop of the load, and two of the small boxes of cartridges.
This was just finished when a voice broke in: "Goin' prospectin'?"
We wheeled about to see a foolish-faced man, with shifty eyes and
slavering mouth, standing by, with firm enough legs, to be sure, but his
body swaying left and right from the hips as though it were set there on
a swivel.
"Yes," said Apache.
"Going prospectin' without a pick or a hammer or a shu-huvel," said the
man, and hiccoughed and dribbled again at the mouth, and then he sat
down on a tree-stump and broke out in a horrible drunken weeping, the
most distressful kind of intoxicated fool I ever saw, and moaned to
himself: "Goin' prospectin' without a--with on'y a gun at the belt and a
Winchester," and he put his hand to his forehead and, bending forward,
wept copiously. I looked on the Chinaman who stood by, placid and
expressionless, and I was ashamed of my race.
"For the love of God," said Apache, "let us get out of this pitiful
hell-- Good-bye, John," to the Chinaman, who raised his lean hand and
waved in farewell in a gesture of the utmost suavity and respect, and
then we struck south (the Chinaman entering his store), and left that
pitiable creature slobbering upon the tree-stump, left the din and
outcrying and hideousness behind us, my very stomach turning at the
sounds, and Apache, too, I think, affected unpleasantly. We went
directly to the south upon the track that led to the Placer Camp on
Kettle River.
On either side of us the forest thinned out there, but the place was
full of a wavering light, for the tree-stumps to left and right of the
track were all smouldering with little, flickering blue flames, and
sending up a white smoke, for this is the manner of clearing the forest
after the trees are felled.
Through this place of flickering lights and waving shadows we still
progressed, leading our horses. Here Apache Kid looked round sharply,
and at the moment I heard a sound as of a twig snapping, but from what
quarter the sound came I could not tell. We were both then looking back,
half expecting to see some one issue forth behind us into the light of
that space where the tree-stumps spluttered and flared and smoked.
"Perhaps it was just one of these stumps crackling," said I.
"It did n't sound just like that; however, I suppose that was all,"
Apache Kid replied. "Well this is our route now." And we struck west
through the timber, back in the direction that Baker City lay, keeping
in a line parallel to the waggon road. And ever and again as we went
Apache emitted a low, long whistle and hearkened and whistled again, and
hearkened and seemed annoyed at the silence alone replying.
Then, coming to the end of the place of smouldering stumps, we struck
back as though to come out on the waggon road before its entering into
Camp Kettle. "Where in thunder is Donoghue?" snapped Apache Kid, and
suddenly the horse I was leading swung back with a flinging up of its
head. Apache Kid was leading the other two and they also began a great
dancing and snorting.
"We have you covered!" cried a harsh voice. "No tricks now! Just you
keep holt of them reins. If you let 'em drop, your name is Dennis! That
'll be something to occupy your hands."
I think the voice quieted the horses, if it perturbed us, for they
became tractable on the instant and ceased their trembling and waltzing.
And there, risen out of a bush before us, stood two men, one with a
Winchester at the ready and the other with his left hand raised, the
open palm facing us, and a revolver looking at me over that, his "gun
hand" being steadied on the left wrist.
I had seen Apache Kid in a somewhat similar predicament before, but his
coolness again amazed me. And, if I may be permitted to say so, I
astonished myself likewise, for after the first leap of the heart I
stood quite easy, holding my horse--more like an onlooker than a
participant in this unchancy occurrence.
"I think you have made a mistake, gentlemen," said Apache Kid.
"Oh, no mistake at all," said he with the Winchester. "I 've just come
out to make you an offer, Apache Kid."
"You have my name," said Apache Kid, "but I have n't the pleasure of
yours."
"Why," said I, "I 've seen that man at the Laughlin House;" and at the
same moment Apache Kid recognised the other in a sudden flickering up of
one of the nighest stumps.
"Why, it's my old inquisitive friend--the hog," said he, looking on him.
"Where did you learn that theatrical style of holding up a gun to a man?
Won't you introduce your friend?"
"That's all right," said the other. "I want you to listen to me.
Here's what we are offering you. You can either come right along with
us to Camp Kettle and draw out a sketch plan of where the Lost Cabin
Mine lies, or else----" he raised his Winchester.
Apache Kid whistled softly.
"How would it suit you," said he, after what seemed a pause for
considering the situation into which we had fallen, "if I drew up the
sketch after you plugged me with the Winchester?"
"O!" cried the man. "The loss of a fortune's on the one hand. The loss
o' your life's on the other. We give you the choice."
"It seems to me," said Apache Kid, "that your hand is the weaker in this
game; for on your side is the loss of a fortune or the taking of a
life."
"I 'd call that the stronger hand, I guess," said the man.
"Well, all a matter of the point of view," murmured Apache Kid, with an
appearance of great ease. "But presuming that I am aware of the
location of that place, what assurance could I have that once you had
the sketch in your hands you would n't slip my wind--in the language of
the country?"
He with the revolver, I noticed, glanced a moment at his partner at
that, but quickly turned his attention to us again. "Besides, I might
draw up a fake map and send you off on a wild goose chase," said Apache
Kid, as though with a sudden inspiration.
"We've thought of that," said he with the Winchester, "and you 'd just
wait with a friend of ours while we went to make sure o' the genewinness
o' your plan."
"Oh! That's what I'd do?" said Apache Kid, and stood cheeping with his
lips a little space and staring before him. Then turning to me, "I 'm
up against it now," he said, "in the language of the country. The terms
are all being made for me and at this rate----" he swung round again to
these two--"you really mean that you are so bent on this that if I did
n't speak up, did n't give you the information you wanted,
you'd--eh--kill me--kill the goose with the golden eggs?"
I marked a change in the tone of Apache's voice, and looking at him
noticed that there was a glitter in his eye and his breath was coming
through his nostrils in fierce gusts, and under his breath he muttered:
"The damned fools! I could keep them blithering here till morning!"
"We might find other means to get the right of it out of you," said the
man with the Winchester. "I 've seen a bit of the Indians from whom you
take your name, and I reckon some of their tricks would bring you to
reason."
"What!" cried Apache Kid. "You'd threaten that, would you? You'd
insult me--coming out with a hog like that to hold me up, too," and he
pointed at the man with the revolver.
"Come! Come!" cried he of the Winchester, "easy wi' that hand. If you
don't come to a decision before I count three, you 're a dead man. I 'll
run chances on finding the Lost Cabin Mine myself. Come now, what are
you going to do? One----"
"Excuse me interrupting," said Apache Kid, "but are you aware that the
gentleman you have brought with you there is an incompetent?"
"Haow?" said the Winchester man. "What you mean?"
"That!" said Apache Kid, and, leaping back and wheeling his horse
between the Winchester and himself, he had plucked forth his revolver
and-- But another crack--the crack of a rifle--rang out in the forest.
I am not certain which was first, but there, before my eyes, the two
men, who had a moment earlier stood exulting over us, sank to the earth,
he with the revolver falling second, so that as he sagged down I heard
the breath of life, one might have thought, belch out of him. It was
really the gasp, I suppose, when the bullet struck him, but it was the
most helpless sound I ever heard in my life--something like the quack of
a duck. Sorry am I that ever I heard that sound, for it, I believe,
more than the occurrence of that night itself, seemed to sadden me, give
me a drearier outlook on life. I wonder if I express myself clearly? I
wonder if you understand what I felt in my heart at that sound? Had he
died with a scream, I think I should have been less haunted by his end.
If our horses shied at the smell of men whom they could not see, they
were evidently well enough accustomed to the snap of firearms, for
beyond a quick snort they paid no heed. As for me, I found then that I
had been a deal more upset by this meeting than I had permitted myself
to believe; and my nerves must have been terribly strung, for no sooner
had they fallen than I shuddered throughout my body, so that I must have
looked like one suffering from St. Vitus dance.
Apache Kid looked at me with a queer, pained expression on his face,
scrutinising me keenly and quickly and then looking away. And into the
wavering light of the burning stumps came Donoghue, with his rifle lying
in the crook of his arm, right up to us and began speaking. No, I
cannot call it speaking. There was no word intelligible. His eyes were
the eyes of a sober man, but when he spoke to us not a word could we
distinguish, and he seemed aware of that himself, spluttering painfully
and putting his hand to his mouth now and again, as with a sort of anger
at himself and his condition. Then suddenly, as though remembering
something, away he went through the timber the way he had come.
"Fancy being killed by that!" said Apache Kid, wetting his lips with his
tongue, and a sick look on his face.
"What's wrong with him?" said I.
"Drunk," said he, and never a word more. But he followed Donoghue, to
where stood a horse, the reins hitched to a tree.
"That's a tough looking mount he's got," said Apache Kid, and then, like
an afterthought: "Try to forget about those two fellows lying there," he
added to me.
I looked at him in something of an emotion very nigh horror.
"Have they to lie there till--till they are found?"
"Yes," said he, "by the wolves to-night--if the light of the stumps
doesn't keep them off. Failing that, to-morrow--by the buzzards."
I looked round then, scarcely aware of the movement, and there, between
the trees, I saw the clearing with the smouldering, twinkling stumps.
The leader of these two lay with his back and his heels and the broad
soles of his feet toward me; but the other, "the hog from Ontario," lay
looking after us, with his dead eyes and his face lighting and
shadowing, lighting up and shadowing pitifully in that ghastly glow.
I turned round no more. I breathed in relief when we came clear of the
forest into the open, sandy ground; but when I saw the stars thick in
the sky, Orion, Cassiopeia, and Ursa Major, the tears welled in my eyes;
they seemed so far from the terrors of that place.
"I 'll wait till you mount," said Apache Kid, holding my horse's head
while I gathered the reins.
When I raised my foot to the stirrup the beast swerved; but at the third
try I got in my foot, and with a spring gained the high saddle.
Donoghue's mount was walking sedately enough, but all the lean body of
it had an evil look. Apache stood to watch his partner mount to the
saddle. Donoghue flung the reins over the horse's neck and came to its
left. He seemed to remember its nature, despite his condition then, for
he ran his hand over the saddle and gave a tug to the cloth to see that
it was firm. Then with a quick jerk, before the horse was well aware,
he had yanked the cinch up another hole or two. At this, taken by
surprise, the beast put its ears back and hung its head and its tail
between its legs. Donoghue pulled his hat down on his head, caught the
check-rein with his left and clapped his right hand to the high, round
pommel. There was a moment's pause; he cast a quick glance to the
horse's head; thrust his foot into the huge stirrup, and with a grunt
and a mighty swing was into the saddle. And then the beast gathered
itself together and with an angry squeal leapt from the ground. Half a
dozen times it went up and down, as you have perhaps seen a cat or a
ferret do--with stiff legs and humped back. But Donoghue seemed part of
the heavy, creaking saddle, and after these lurchings and another
half-dozen wheelings the brute calmed. Apache Kid swung himself up to
his horse and we struck on to the stage road in the light of the stars.
And just then there came a clinking of horse's hoofs to our ears and
there, on the road coming up from Camp Kettle, and bound toward Baker
City, was an old, grey-bearded man leading a pack-horse and spluttering
and coughing as he trudged ahead in the dust.
"It's a good night, gentlemen," he said, stopping and eyeing
us--Donoghue across the road, in the lead, and already a few paces up
the hillside, Apache Kid with the led horse, I blocking his passage way.
"Yes; it's a fair night," said Apache Kid, civilly enough, but I thought
him vexed at this encounter.
"It's a cough I take at times," said the old man, wheezing again. "I 'm
getting up in years. Yes, you 're better to camp out in the hills
instead of going into Camp Kettle to-night. I 've seen some camps in my
day--I 'm gettin' an old man. No; I could n't stop in that place
to-night."
His pack-horse stood meekly behind him, laden up with blankets, pans,
picks, and the inevitable Winchester.
"Yes, siree, you 're better in the hills, a fine starry night o' summer,
instead of down there. It's a cough I have," he wheezed. "I 'm gettin'
an old man. Any startling news to relate?"
"Nothing startling," said Apache Kid.
"What you think o' the rush to Spokane way? Anything in it, think you?"
said the old man in his slow, weary voice.
"O, I think----" began Apache Kid, but the old man seemed to forget he
had put a question.
"What you think o' this part o' the country?" he asked, and then
abruptly, without evidently desiring an answer: "Well, well, I 'll give
you good night. I 'll keep goin' on, till I get a good camp place--maybe
all night I don't like Camp Kettle to-night," and grumbling something
about being an old man now, he plodded on, his pack-horse waking up at
the jerk on the rein and following behind.
"Aye," sighed Apache Kid to me, "no wonder they say 'as crazy as a
prospector.' It's the hills that do it. The hills and the loneliness
and all that," he said with a wave of his hand in the starshine. Then
suddenly he spurred forward his horse upon Donoghue and in a low,
vehement voice: "Stop that, Donoghue!" he said. "What on earth are you
wanting to do?"
For Donoghue was glaring after the weary old prospector and dragging his
Winchester from the sling at his saddle. He managed to splutter out the
word "blab" as he pointed after the man and then pulled again at the
Winchester which he found difficult to get free. But Apache Kid smote
Donoghue's horse upon the flank and pressed him forward and so we left
the road and began breasting the hill with the stars, brilliant and
seeming larger to me than ever they seemed seen through the atmosphere
of the old country, shining down on us out of a cloudless sky.
Perhaps it had been better had Donoghue got his rifle free, callous
though it may seem to say so. For other lives might have been spared
and these mountains, into the foothills of which we now plunged, have
not been assoiled with the blood of many had that one solitary old
prospector ceased his weary seekings and his journeyings there, as
Donoghue intended.
*CHAPTER X*
_*In the Enemy's Camp*_
In a little fold of the hills we made our camp, somewhere about two in
the morning, I should think.
Donoghue rolled off his horse at a word from Apache Kid, and stood
yawning and grunting, but Apache Kid had his partner's blankets undone
in a twinkling and bade him lie down and go to sleep. Then he hobbled
the horses and, sitting down on his own blanket-roll, which he had not
undone:
"Could you eat anything?" said he.
"Eat!" I ejaculated.
"Well, sleep, then?" he said.
"Aye, I could sleep," said I. "I should like to sleep never to awaken."
"As bad as that?" said he.
"Look here," said I. "I 've just been thinking that I----" and I
stopped.
Something was creeping stealthily along the ridge of the cup in which we
sat, and the horses were all snorting, drowning the sound of Donoghue's
deep breathing.
"It's only a coyote," said Apache Kid, looking up in the direction of my
gaze. "You look tired, my boy," he added in a kindlier voice. "Well,
if these fellows are going to sit round us, I suppose I 'd better make a
fire; but I did n't want to. We 'll make a small one. You know what
the Indians say: 'Indian make small fire and lie close; white man make
big fire and lie heap way off. White man dam fool!' And there is some
sense in it. We don't want to light a beacon to-night, anyway."
So saying, he rose and cried "Shoo!" to the skulking brutes that went
round and round our hollow, showing lean and long against the sky.
I watched him going dim and shadowy along the hill-front, where
contorted bushes waved their arms now and then in the night wind. He
took a small axe with him, from the pouch of his saddle, and I heard the
clear "ping" of it now and then after he himself was one with the
bushes. And there I sat with my weary thoughts beside the snoring man
and the horses huddling close behind me, as though for my company, and
the prowl, prowl of the coyotes round and round me. Then suddenly these
latter scattered again and Apache Kid returned, like a walking tree
beside the pale sky, and made up a fire and besought me to lie down,
which I had no sooner done than I fell asleep, for I was very weary.
Now and then I woke and heard far-off cries,--of wildcats, I
suppose,--and saw the stars twinkling in the heavens and the little
parcel of fire flickering at my feet; but the glow of Apache Kid's
cigarette reassured me each time, and though once I thought of asking
him if he himself did not want to sleep, so heavy with sleep was I that
I sank again into oblivion ere the thought was fairly formed.
So it was morning at last, when I came again broad awake, and Apache Kid
was sitting over the fire with the frying-pan in hand. Indeed, the
first thing I saw on waking was the flip he gave to the pan that sent
the pancake--or flapjack, as it is called--twirling in the air. And as
he caught it neatly on the undone side and put the pan again on the
blaze (that the morning sunlight made a feeble yellow) I gathered that
he was catechising Donoghue, who sat opposite him staring at him very
hard across the fire.
"No," Larry was saying, "I got a horse all right, and gave out at the
stable that I was going to the Placer Camp, and struck south right
enough and went into the bit where we were to meet and sat there waiting
you, and not a soul came nigh hand all the derned time."
"How do you know, when you acknowledge you were as drunk as drunk?"
"How do I know?" said Donoghue. "Why, drunk or sober, I never lose
anything more than my speech."
"True," said Apache. "But you 're a disgusting sight when you are
trying to talk and----"
"Well, well; let that drop," said Donoghue. "I was sober enough to let
the wind out of that fellow that held up you two."
"Thanks to you," said Apache Kid. "Which reminds me that there may be
others on the track of us; though how these fellows followed so quick
I----"
"O, pshaw!" said Donoghue. "You must have come away careless from Baker
City. I saw the stage comin' in from where I was layin', and I saw them
two fellows comin' up half an hour after."
"O!" said Apache Kid, paying no heed to the charge of a careless
departure. "And anybody else suspicious-looking?"
Donoghue shook his head. But the meal was now ready, and I do not know
when I enjoyed a meal as I did that flapjack and the bacon and the big
canful of tea made with water from a creek half a mile along the hill,
as Apache Kid told me, so that I knew he had been busy before I awoke.
I felt a little easier at the heart now than on the night before, and
less inclined to renounce my agreement and return. But suddenly, as we
were saddling up again, the thought of those dead men came into my head;
and though of a certainty they had been evil men, yet the thought that
these two with me had taken human lives gave me a "grew," as the Scots
say.
I turned about and looked at my companions.
"Would you be annoyed if I suggested turning back?" I asked, coming
right to the point.
It was Donoghue who answered.
"Guess we would n't be annoyed; but you would n't get leave, you dirty
turncoat."
But Apache turned wrathfully on him.
"Turncoat?" he cried. "Do you think he wants to go down and give us
away? If you do, you 're off the scent entirely. It 's the thought of
those dead men that has sickened him of coming."
"O, pshaw!" cried Donoghue, grinning. "Sorry I spoke, Francis. There
's my fist; shake. Never mind the dead men."
We "shook," but I have to say that I did not relish the feel of that
hand, somehow. He was a man, this, who lived in a different world from
mine.
"Why, sure you can go back, if you like," said he. And then suddenly he
caught himself up and said: "No, no, for the love of God don't do that!
Apache Kid and me don't do with being alone in the mountains."
On one point at least this man felt deeply, it would appear.
"Well," said Apache Kid to me. "That's a better tone of Donoghue's. To
beseech a favour is always better than to threaten or to attempt
coercion and I must add my voice to his and ask you to come on with us.
Though personally," he added, "had I once made a compact with anyone, I
would carry it through to the bitter end."
"I should never have suggested this," said I, feeling reproved. "I will
not mention it again."
This was the end of my uncertainty, and we rode on through the June day
till we came to the north part of the Kettle River, gurgling and
bubbling and moving in itself with sucking, oily whirlpools, and
travelled beside it a little way and then left it at the bend where it
seethed black and turbid with a sound like a herd bellowing.
The creek we came to at noon was kindlier, with a song in place of a
cry; swift flowing it was, so that it nearly took our horses from their
feet as we crossed it, or the nigher half of it, rather (for we camped
on an islet in the midst of it and the second crossing was shallower and
easy), but, though swift as the Kettle, it made one lightsome instead of
despondent to see. The sun shone down into its tessellated bed, all the
pebbles gleaming. The rippling surface sparkled and near the islet was
dappled over with the thin shadows of the birches that stood there
balancing and swaying. And scarcely had we begun our meal when we heard
a clatter midst the pebbles and a splashing in the water, and there came
an old Indian woman on a tall horse, with a white star on its forehead,
and pots and kettles hanging on either side of it. It came up with
dripping belly out of the creek and went slapping past us in the sand
and the old dame's slit of a mouth widened and her eyes brightened on us
under the glorious kerchief she wore about her head.
"How do," said my companion, and she nodded to us, passed on, and the
babe slung on her back stared at us with wide eyes.
For an hour after that they came in twos and threes, men and women, the
young folk laughing and chatting among themselves, giving the lie again
to all tales of an Indian never smiling. It was a great sight to me and
I can never forget that islet in the Kettle River. Not one of the
people stopped to talk. The men and the old women gave us "How do" and
drew themselves up erect in their saddles. The younger women smiled,
showing white teeth to us in a quick flash and then looking away.
Apache Kid was radiant. "They're a fine people, these," said he.
"Yes," said Donoghue, "when you 've got a gun and keep them at a
distance."
"Nonsense," cried Apache Kid. "I 've lived among them and I know."
"Yes, lived among 'em to buy 'em whisky, I guess, so as they could get
round about the law."
"No," said Apache Kid, "never bought them a single bottle all the time I
was with them."
I could see that Donoghue believed his partner, but I could see too that
he could not comprehend this story of living with the Indians for no
obvious reason. He looked at Apache Kid as men look on one they cannot
understand, but spoke no further word.
After we left that camp, as we struck away across the valley toward the
far-off range, we saw these folk still on the other mountainside and
caught the occasional flash of the sunlight on a disk, maybe, or on a
mirror, or the polished heel of a rifle swinging by the saddle; and then
we lost sight of them among the farther woods.
That picturesque sight did a deal to lighten my heart. Apache Kid, too,
was mightily refreshed the rest of the afternoon, and spun many an
Indian yarn which Donoghue heard without any suggestion of disbelief.
But it was no picnic excursion we were out upon. We had come into the
hollow of the hills. We were indeed at the end of the foothills, and
across the valley before us the mountains rose sheer, as though shutting
us into this vale. To right, the east, was a wooded hill, parallel with
which we now rode; and to left cliffs climbed upwards with shelving
places here and there on their front, very rugged and savage.
Donoghue nodded in the direction of a knoll ahead of us, and said:
"Shall we camp at the old spot? It's gettin' nigh sundown; anyway, I
guess we've done our forty to fifty mile already."
"Yes," said Apache Kid. "It's a good spot."
"You've been here before?" I inquired.
My two companions looked in each other's eyes with a meaning glance.
"Yes, we 've been here before," said Donoghue, and I had the idea that
there was something behind this. So there was; but I was not to hear
it--then.
Suddenly we all three turned about at the one instant for a far-off
"Yah-ah-ah-ah!" came to us.
There, behind us, we saw two riders, and they were posting along in our
track at great speed.
We reined up and watched them, Apache Kid drawing his Winchester across
his saddle pommel, and Donoghue following suit, I, for my part,
slackening my revolver in the holster.
Nearer they came, bending forward their heads to the wind of their
passage and the dust drifting behind them in two spiral clouds. Then I
saw that one was a white man with a great, fluttering beard; the other
an Indian, or half-breed. And just at the moment that I recognised the
bearded man Apache Kid cried out: "Why! It's the proprietor of the
Half-Way-to-Kettle House."
"What in hell do he want up here?" said Donoghue. "Lead?"
They came down on us in the approved western fashion, with a swirl and a
rush, stopping short with a jerk and the horses' sides going like
bellows.
"Good day, gentlemen," said the man of the beard. "Are you gentlemen
aware that there's no less than seven gentlemen followin' you up,
thirstin' for your money or your life-blood or something?"
"Well, sir," said Apache Kid, "it does not surprise me to hear of it."
"So," said the shaggy-bearded, whose name, by the way, was J. D.
Pinkerton, for all who passed by to read above his
hostel--"Half-Way-Rest Hotel--Prop.: J. D. Pinkerton," so ran the legend
there.
"So," he repeated again, and again and took the tangle from his beard.
"Well, I reckon from what I saw of two of you gentlemen already that you
don't jest need to be spoon-fed and put in your little cot at by-by
time, but--well, you see my daughter--she has a way o' scarin' me when
she puts it on. And she says: 'Dad,' she says, 'if you don't go and
warn them, their blood will be on your head should anything happen to
them.' Now, I don't want no blood on my head, gentlemen. And then she
says: 'Well, if you don't go, I 'll jest have to go myself with
Charlie--this is Charlie--Charlie, gentlemen--a smart boy, a good boy,
great hand at tracking stolen stock and the like employ. An old
prospector had seen you, and by good luck he stopped us, and by better
luck I was polite for once and listened to his chin-chin, and so we
heard where you had got off the waggon road. After that it was all
child's play to Charlie here."
"We owe you our thanks, sir," said Apache, and then the moodiness went
from his face, and he said in a cheerful tone: "But they may never find
out what way we 've gone. You see it was a mere chance, your meeting
that prospector and being told of the point at which we left the road."
"That's so," said Mr. Pinkerton: "but still there's chances, you know."
"Oh, yes," said Apache Kid, and again: "We owe you our thanks," said he.
"Not you, not you!" said Mr. Pinkerton.
"But what sort of outfit is this that you have come to post us up
about?"
"Why, just as dirty a set of greazers as ever stole stock, and they must
sit there talkin' away about you in the dining-room after they had told
my daughter they was through with their dinner; and my cook heard 'em
from his pantry--told my lass--she told me--I'm tellin' you--there you
have the whole thing,--how they 're to dog you up and wait till you get
to your Lost Cabin. And now we 're here. But I want to let you
know--for I 'm a proud man and would n't like any suspicions, though
they might be nat'ral enough for you to harbour--want just to let you
know that as for what you 're after--this yere Lost Cabin,--I don't give
that for it," and he snapped his fingers. "I 've got all a rational man
wants. But we 'll chip in with you, if you think of waiting on a bit to
see if you 're followed."
"Sir," said Apache Kid, "I have to thank you again. I have to thank
you, and your daughter through you, and your cook; but I must beg of you
to get back."
"Pshaw!" cried Pinkerton. "What's that for?"
"Well--this may be a bloody business, sir, if we are followed, and it
would be the saddest thing imaginable----" he broke off and asked
abruptly:
"Pardon the question, sir, but is Mrs. Pinkerton alive?"
"My good wife is in her resting grave in Old Kentucky," said Pinkerton
in a new voice.
"That settles it, sir," said Apache Kid. "It would be a sad thing to
think of that fine girl down at the Half-Way House as an orphan."
Pinkerton frowned.
"When you put it that way," said he, "you take all the fight out of
J.D."
"Then I must even beg you to be gone, sir, before there is any chance of
pursuit by these men," said Apache Kid. "If we come back alive, we may
all call and thank you again, and Miss Pinkerton too. I beg of you to
go and take care of meeting them on the way."
"Well, boys, luck to you all, then," and round he wheeled and away with
a swirl of leather while the half-breed laid the quirt, that swung at
his wrist, to his lean pony's flanks and, with a nod to us, shot after
Mr. Pinkerton.
We watched them till they had almost crested the rise and there suddenly
they stopped, wheeled, and next moment had dismounted.
"What's wrong?" said Donoghue. "Something wrong there."
"It looks as if the chance Pinkerton spoke of was against us after all,"
said Apache Kid, quietly.
We were not left long in doubt, for a puff of smoke rose near the
backbone of the rise and a flash of a rifle and then seven mounted men
swept down on these two.
We saw the half-breed tug at his horse's head; saw the brute sink down
to its knees, saw the half-breed fling himself on his belly behind it,
and then his rifle flashed.
The seven riders spread out as they charged down on the two and at the
flash of the rifle we saw one of them fall from the saddle and his horse
rear and wheel, then spin round and dash madly across the valley,
dragging the fallen rider by a stirrup for quite a way, with a hideous
bumping and rebounding.
But it was on the two dismounted men on the hill-front that my attention
was concentrated, and round them the remaining six of their assailants
were now circling.
"Come on!" cried Apache Kid.
He dropped the reins of our pack-horse to the ground and remarked: "She
'll not go far with the rein like that and the pack on her."
Next moment we three were tituping along the valley in the direction of
the two held-up men.
Apache Kid was a little ahead of me, Donoghue a length behind, but
Donoghue's mount would not suffer us to go in that order long. With a
snort it bore Donoghue abreast of me and I clapped my heels to the
flanks of my beast. Next moment we were all in line, with the wind
whistling in our ears. The six men who seemed to be parleying with
Pinkerton and the half-breed, suddenly catching sight of us in our
charge, I suppose, wheeled about and went at a wild gallop, with dirt
flying from their horses' hoofs, slanting across the hill.
And then I had an exhibition of Donoghue's madness.
He cried out an oath, the most terrible I ever heard, and, "Come on,
boys," he shouted to us.
"Yes, let's settle it to-day," came Apache's voice.
"Right now!" cried Donoghue, and away we went after the fugitives.
I saw the reason for this action at once; for to put an end to these men
now would be the only sure way to make certain of an undisputed tenancy
of the Lost Cabin. Indeed, their very flight in itself was enough to
suggest not so much that they were afraid of us (for Pinkerton had given
them the name of fearless scoundrels) as that they did not want an
encounter yet--that their time had not yet come. But for Pinkerton,
they might have followed up quietly the whole way to our goal. Thanks
to him, we knew of them following. This, though not their time to
fight, was our time.
Suddenly I saw Donoghue, who was ahead, rear his horse clean back on to
its haunches and next moment he was down on a knee beside it, and, just
as I came level with him, his rifle spoke and in a voice scarcely human
he cried, "Got 'im! Got 'im! The son of a dog!"
And sure enough, there was a riderless horse among the six and a man all
asprawl in the sunshine before us.
But at that the flying men wheeled together and all five of them were on
their feet before Apache Kid and I could draw rein. I heard a rifle
snap again behind me, whether Apache Kid's or Donoghue's I did not know,
and then, thought I, "If I stop here, I 'm done for; I 've got to keep
going."
The same thought must have been in Apache Kid's mind for I heard the
quick patter of his pony as it came level with me. He passed me and he
and I--I now a length behind him--came level with the five men clustered
there behind their horses and the horse of the fallen man, Apache crying
to me:
"Try a flying shot at them."
He fired at that, and a yell rose in the group and I saw one man fall
and then I up with my revolver and let fly at one of the fellows who was
looking at me along his gun-barrel.
And just at that moment it struck me, in the midst of all the fluttering
excitement, that they let Apache Kid go by without a shot. But right on
my shot my horse went down--his foot in a badger hole--and though
afterwards I found that I had slain the horse that the fellow who was
aiming at me was using as a bastion, I knew nothing of that then--for I
smashed forward on my head.
The last thing I heard was the snort of pain that my horse gave, and the
first thing, when I awakened, that I was aware of was that I was lying
on my back looking up at the glaring sky, a great throbbing going on in
my head.
My hands were tied together behind my back and my ankles also trussed up
in a similar manner.
I was in the wrong camp. I had fallen somehow into the hands of our
enemies.
*CHAPTER XI*
_*How It Was Dark in the Sunlight*_
You will hear persons speak of one who has been in a trance or swoon as
"returning to consciousness." I remember once of hearing someone
objecting to the phrase, saying that a person was either conscious or
unconscious, and to speak of one returning to consciousness as though
there was a middle state, he argued, was erroneous; but I discovered for
myself, that day, the full meaning of the phrase; for first it was a
sound that I heard, a sound as of rustling wings, and this presently
changed and became the sound of whispering as of a whole chamber full of
furtive, stealthy persons talking under the breath. Then I was aware of
the sunlight in my face and at the same moment the number of voices
dwindled and the power of them increased. I opened my eyes and found
myself lying in a mighty uncomfortable and strained position upon a slab
of rock, so hot with the sun that my hands, which were behind my back
and under me as I lay, were absolutely scorched. I made to withdraw
them and then found they were fast tied together.
As for the voices I heard, they were only two in number, I think.
"He's all right; I see his eyes flickerin'," said one, and there,
bending over me, was a face as full of evil as ever I desired to see.
I have seen a cast of an eye that almost seemed to give a certain quaint
charm to a face; but the cast in these eyes that scrutinised me now was
of the most diabolic.
My head was beating and thumping like a shipyard with all its riveters,
and the pain between my eyes was well-nigh unbearable.
With puckering eyebrows I scrutinised my captor, and as I did so he
cried out: "Here you are now, Farrell."
"Right!" came a voice from behind, and the man called Farrell shuffled
down on us, a big-boned, heavy-browed man with a three days' stubble on
his face which was of a blue colour around the upper lip and on the
jaws--and over his right cheek-bone there was an ugly scar of a dirty
white showing there amidst the sun-tan.
I thought at first it was a whip he carried in his hand, but suddenly
what I took for the thong of the whip wriggled as of its own accord, and
addressing himself to it, he said: "None o' your wrigglin', Mr. Rattler,
or I 'll give you one flick that 'll crack your backbone."
Then I saw that what he carried was a stick, with a short string at the
end of it and in the end of that string was a noose, taut around a
rattlesnake's tail, just above the knob of the rattle.
"See what I've bin fishin' for you?" he said, and laughed in an ugly
way.
He of the terrible eyes caught me roughly by the shoulders and drew me
to a sitting posture, so that I saw where we were--on a rock-strewn
ledge of some cliffs, which I supposed to be those we had seen on our
left from the valley. But owing to the rise of the ledge toward the
front I could not see the lower land, only the far, opposing cliffs,
blue and white and yellow, with the fringe of trees a-top. And lying on
their bellies at the verge of the shelf on which we were, I then saw two
other men, with their rifles beside them, lying like scouts, gazing down
intently on the valley.
I had no thought then as to how we came there, where my friends were,
nor for any other matter save my own present peril. For before I was
well aware, and while yet too feeble to offer any resistance, too dazed
to make any protest, I was flung down upon my face in the sand, and
then, "Give me a hand here, you two," said Farrell, and the scouts
turned and rose, and, one of them clutching me by the back of the neck
and thrusting my face down into the sand, I felt a weight gradually
crushing upon my back and legs.
"That's him!" said one, and then my neck was freed.
The weight upon my buttocks and legs was nothing else than a great, flat
slab of rock. I thought, though it had been lowered gently enough on
me, that the heaviness of it would alone be sufficient to crush my
bones. Certainly to move below the waist was quite out of the question.
All this I suffered in a dumb, half-here, half-away fashion, my head
hammering and my tongue parched in my mouth like a piece of dry wood.
But when these four laughed brutally among themselves and began a series
of remarks such as: "See and don't give it an inch too short," or, "See
that the string's taut or we 'll not get what we want," I came more to
my senses and wondered what was to befall me. Then, for the first time,
I was addressed directly by Farrell.
"Well, kid," he said, "you 're in a tight corner--you hear me?
"I hear you," said I, speaking with difficulty, so dry was my throat.
"Well," said he, "you can get out of this fix right off by telling us
where the Lost Cabin Mine lies. And that's business right off, with no
delay."
"I can never do that," said I, "for I don't know myself."
There was a chorus of unbelieving grunts and then: "All right," snapped
the voice. "Fact is, we have n't much inclination to loiter here. You
've taken a mighty while to come round, too, as it is--shove it in," he
broke off.
But the last words were not for me.
One of the others stepped before me, his foot grazing my head, and I
heard him say, "There?"
"No," said another. "That's over close--yes, there. That's the spot."
And then they all stepped back from me, and I, lying with my chin in the
dust, saw what the man had been about; for directly before me was the
point of the stick, thrust into the ground, with the snake noosed by the
tail to it.
No sooner had the man who fixed it in leaped back (and he did so very
smartly, while the others laughed at him and caused him to rip out a
hideous oath) than the reptile coiled fiercely up the stick; but the
hand was gone from the end of it, and down it slithered again.
Then it saw me with its beady eyes, rattled fiercely, again coiled,
and--I closed my eyes and drew in my head to the shoulders and wriggled
as far to the side as I could.
But something smote me on the chin. I felt my heart in my throat, and
thought I to myself, "I am a dead man now"; but before I opened my eyes
again I heard another rattle, opened my eyes in quick horror, saw the
second leap of the snake toward me, and shrivelled backward again.
"Close shave!" cried one of my tormentors; but this time, after the tap
on my chin I felt something moist trickle down upon the point of it, and
I thought me that I was close enough to get the poison that it spat, but
not close enough to allow of its fangs reaching me.
"But if this stuff should reach my eye it might be fatal," thought I,
heedless now of headache or weariness, or anything but the terrible
present. My mouth, too, I kept tight closed, as you may guess.
"Will you tell us now, kid?" cried Farrell. "Will you spit it out now?"
Thought I to myself: "I must die now for certain. I trust that even if I
knew, I would not reveal this that they ask. But assuredly, to reveal
it or to keep it secret is not mine to choose. I must even die."
It came into my head that soon the thin string would, at one of these
leaps, cut clean through the snake's tail, and then-- Then it leapt
again.
"I do not know!" cried I. "I cannot tell you!"
"Then you can just lie there!" snapped one of the four, and went back to
his place of outlook on the ledge. And the other, who had been watching
the valley, came and stood by my shoulder, irritating the snake, by his
presence, to fresh efforts.
"You 're a fool," he said. "Your partners have deserted you. They 're
off. There ain't hide nor hair to be seen of them. If they 'd leave
you in a lurch like this, you 're a fool not to let us know the
location. We 'll follow 'em up again and take vengeance on 'em for
you--see?"
And just then, as though to refute his remarks as to the heedlessness of
my partners, I heard a faint snap of a rifle, and the man with the
squint, who had taken his turn on guard at the place this fellow had
vacated, turned round and said he: "Boys, O boys, I 'm hit!"
Something in the tone of his voice made me glance at him sharply, but
with half an eye for the snake, as you may be sure, and my ears alert
for its warning rattle. I was never more alert in my life than then,
and, strange though it may seem, the predominating thought in my mind
was, "How sad, how very sad to leave this world, never to see the rich,
rich blue of that sky again!"
But, as I say, the tone of the man's voice breaking in on my thoughts
and terrors was peculiar, and, with my head still as low in my shoulders
as I could manage to hold it, I laid my cheek to the hot sand and looked
at him. He had turned to the man who had been standing by me, but at
sound of the shot had dropped to his knees.
"Does it look bad?" said he, drawing his finger across his forehead,
where was a tiny mark, and then holding out his hand and looking on it
for traces of blood, raising up his face for inspection by the man
beside me at the same time, and a question in his eyes, very much as you
have seen a child, "Is my face clean, mother?" Yes, and with a very
childish voice, too.
"It don't look bad," was the reply--and neither it did.
But when he turned away again to the other sentry who lay further off,
repeating his question to him in that simple voice, I saw the back of
his head. And his brains were dribbling out behind upon his neck. A
terrible weakness filled my heart. I heard him say, with no oath, as one
might have expected, but in a soft voice: "Dear me!" and again, "Dear
me! How very dark it is getting!"
Which was an awful word to hear with the sun blazing right in his eyes
out of the burnished, palpitating sky. And then he put it as a question
and still with the note of astonishment: "Dear me, isn't that strange?
Is n't it getting very----" and he sank forward on his face; but what
followed I do not know. In the terror of my own position I kept all my
faculties alert; but at the sight of that man's back and the bloody
wound, and at the childish voice of him, the world seemed to wheel. A
sickness came on me and I fainted away.
*CHAPTER XII*
_*I Am Held as a Hostage*_
It must have been more of a momentary squeamishness, that, rather than a
fainting fit, I think; for I heard myself moan twice, was conscious of
the moaning. There seemed something pressing on my heart and forcing me
to gasp for breath and relieve the tension on it. A sweat broke on me
then, and after that I felt myself, as it were, swinging through space,
and with another gasp and a great gulp of air the world spun back again
and there I lay, the cold sweat standing on my brow, and the rattlesnake
coiling afresh.
"Why! What's this move now?" I heard one of my captors cry. "What's he
doin' with his rifle carried and waggling his hand in the air that
ways?"
"Don't you know what that is? That's the peace sign--flat of the hand
held up, palm open and pushed forward wi' that there kind o' to-and-fro
movement."
"Peace sign be durned! If I was sure we could get the information out
of this here kid laying behind us, I'd put a bullet through his skull
and let out his brains--front of his face or back of his neck like
Cockeye there--all the same to me."
"Reckon you 'd be safer not to do that."
"Think the kid here won't speak, then?"
"No; I don't think he'll speak. I've just been figurin' that neither
Apache Kid nor Larry might tell him. He's liable to be givin' you
straight goods and no lie when he says he don't know the location."
"Pity we did n't drop Apache Kid's hoss that time they charged down. We
could ha' got him, instead, that way. Reckon we need n't have been so
scared o' killin' Apache Kid himself without gettin' the news. But say!
This won't do. I don't like the looks of this thing. They all are
getting a move on 'em and edgin' up this way, the whole three of 'em."
"Three of them," thought I, with my eye on the rattler. "That's one
short. I wonder who has been killed or disabled."
"Say! Shout to him to stop. Tell him if he wants to pow-wow with us to
come up alone."
"Yes, and leave his rifle down. You do the talkin' now, Farrell."
"Right," said Farrell, and then he shouted, "Well, what do you want?"
"I want to come up and talk this out with you," hailed a voice that I
recognised for Apache Kid's.
"He can't come up here," said Farrell. "We don't want 'em to know that
we 're only a threesome now, same as 'em."
"I 'll tell you what to do," said one of them, with the voice of a man
who has been visited by a sudden inspiration.
"Stop there a minute!" cried Farrell, and then turning to the speaker he
said sharply: "Spit it out then, Pete; what's your notion?"
"Loosen the kid there," said Pete, "and set him on the front here and
hold your gat to his head while we hear what they 've got to palaver."
"Hum!" mused Farrell. "Kind o' hostage notion? Heh? Well, there's
something in that," and he stood upright fearlessly and held his hand
aloft, the palm facing away to those in the valley.
"You can come up the length o' that there white rock," he cried, and
then to his companions: "See! Lend a hand here."
The snake had coiled again. I cannot guess how often it had sprung at
me; I do not know. All that I know is that at every fresh rattle I
crouched my head into my shoulders and gasped to myself the one word
"God"; for we all, I believe, no matter what manner of lives we have
led, at the last moment give a cry to the Unknown, in our hearts, if not
with our lips. And every leap of the snake I was prepared to find the
one that was to make an end of my acquaintance with the sunlight and
with the sweet airs that blow about the world.
But that torment was over now, for with one swift drop of his rifle-butt
Farrell cut the head clean from the hideous long body, and then lent the
other two men a hand to roll the great stone from off my aching limbs.
"Stand up, you son of a whelp," he said, and spurned me with his boot.
After the terror of the snake there seemed little now that I need heed.
"It's easier said than done!" I cried, angry at his words. "I 'm like a
block of stone from my waist down."
"I guess that's right. He must be feeling that way," said one of the
others, with a touch of commiseration in his voice.
That was the first sign of any heart that I had discovered in the
ruffians.
"Oh, you guess it's right, do you, Dan?" sneered Farrell. "Well, lend a
hand and haul him here to the front of this ledge."
Next moment it was as if a thousand red-hot needles were being run into
my stiff, trailing legs, for they caught me up by my arms and drew me
like a sack to the front of the cliff.
And then I saw the whole plateau below us. Apache Kid was half-way up
the rise, among the long wire-grass at the verge of the cliffs; further
down, leaning upon a rock, his shoulders and head visible, was Larry
Donoghue. The third man that had been spoken of I could not see and
searched the hillside in vain for; but when Farrell stood upright beside
me and waved his hand I saw the half-breed, Charlie, who had come after
us with Mr. Pinkerton, rise behind a flat rock and lounge across it,
looking up on us with his broad sombrero pushed back on his head.
Mr. Pinkerton, I supposed, had been prevailed upon to return out of our
dispute, lest his life might be the forfeit for his interest in our
behalf. But just as that explanation for his non-appearance had
satisfied me I saw, half across the plain, something moving slowly--a
pack of horses it seemed, and so clear was the air of that late
afternoon that I recognised the form of the mounted man who guarded
them, could almost, with a lengthy and concentrated survey, descry his
great beard like a bib upon his breast.
"Well," said Farrell, "what do you want to pow-wow about? You see who
we got here?"
"I see," said Apache Kid, putting a foot upon the white stone. "How are
you, Francis?"
"He 's all right," said Farrell. "But he 's a kind o' prisoner o' war
just now."
"Oh!" said Apache Kid. "Well, I suppose if we want to get him back we
'll have to buy him back?"
"That's what!" said Farrell, emphatically.
"Well," said Apache Kid, "we are going on,--my friends and I,--and, as
we have your horses now as well as our own, we thought we might perhaps
be able to trade you them back for the lad."
And here, as you will be wondering how the horses had changed hands, I
must tell you what I had afterwards explained to me.
It seems that no sooner did I fall from my horse, at the time it put its
foot in the badger hole (Apache Kid having gone past wildly, bringing
down one man and one horse with his two running shots), than the four
men, seeing my predicament, swung to their horses' backs, opened out,
and two of them passing, one on either side of me, swung from their
saddles and yanked me up by my arms.
Then full tilt they charged down the centre of the plain, intending
evidently to make the rising knoll, of which I spoke, in the valley's
centre. And with me lying across Farrell's saddle, they doubtless
thought they had the key to the Lost Cabin. But Apache Kid wheeled his
horse below, and Donoghue mounted again above, and from the hill-crest
the half-breed spurred down, and so these three set after us, converging
on each other as they came.
But Farrell's mount was falling behind with the burden of my extra
weight, and they wheeled sharp to left and put their horses directly to
the cliff-front. These ponies can do marvels in climbing, but they were
over-jaded, having been very hard ridden, and right on the slope it was
evident that not only the half-breed, but Larry next, and Apache Kid
following, were coming within effect range. It was Farrell who proposed
their move then, considering that with me in their hands half the battle
was won if only they had something in the way of a fort from which to
stave off attack. So they flung off there, and, letting their horses
go, up they came, dragging me along. But at the foot of the hill the
others stopped, seeing how they had all the odds against them then and
were so fully exposed. For it had not yet occurred to them, as indeed
was very natural it should not, that the last thing these men wanted to
do was to fire upon them.
The intention of this little company of cut-throats had been to follow
up softly in the rear, as near as possible without being seen by us,
until we came to our journey's end. What they had planned for us then
it is, perhaps, needless to so much as hint. Little did they think that
between them and us was Mr. Pinkerton, carrying the news of their
possible pursuit. But when they saw him riding out of that plain, with
the half-breed, the whole reason for his presence there was guessed by
them, especially when they saw us halted within sight, the whole three
of us turned round as though already watching for their approach. It
was, undoubtedly, this upsetting of their plans that made them so
short-tempered and snappish with one another.
But by now I think even Farrell was convinced that I was useless to them
in so far as the giving of information went. And so I was now to be
used as a hostage,--a sort of living breastwork before them,--as though
they were to say: "See! if you fire, you kill your partner!"
Farrell laughed loud at Apache Kid's suggestion.
"Why," said he, "you talk as if you held the trumps; but you don't. And
for why? Why, because we do." And he spat in the sand and put a hand
on either hip. "We don't need our horses, my mates and me. We ain't in
any hurry, and can set here as long as you like,--aye, or go away when
we like, for that matter. What we want is that Lost Cabin Mine, and if
you don't tell us where it is, why, then we'll let the wind out of your
partner here."
"And where do we come in?" yelled Donoghue, rearing up beside his bush.
"Oh!" said Farrell, insolently, "are you talking, too? Well, you don't
come in at all. There you are! That's something for you to consider!"
Donoghue broke out in a roar of laughter.
"Oh," he said, "the lad is nothing to us. You can do what you like with
him."
Apache Kid turned upon him with a glance as of astonishment, and then
again to Farrell he said:
"I 'll give you the offer we came up with, and you and your two mates
can consider it."
"Three mates, you mean," snapped Farrell.
"Na! Na!" cried Donoghue. "When I look along a rifle I never err."
"Oh, it was you did it?" cried Farrell. "Well, what's your offer?"
"This is our offer," said Apache Kid. "You can come along with us. We
are three, and so are you, and we can split the Lost Cabin between us."
Farrell turned to his two companions and looked a question at them.
"I guess you 'd better take that," said the man Dan, "for I reckon even
if we did suggest killing this kid, it would n't bring the facts out of
'em."
"And anyhow," said the other, him they called Pete, speaking low, but
yet I caught the drift of his words, "we can easy enough fix them all
when we get there."
"Come on!" said Apache Kid. "How does our offer strike you? Are you
aware that every hour we delay there may be others getting closer to the
Lost Cabin Mine?"
"Take the offer, man. Take the offer," said Pete and Dan.
"All right," cried Farrell. "But mind, we're bad men, and this will
have to be run on the square."
Donoghue laughed, and for a moment, as I looked at him, I saw an evil
glitter in his eye. "Oh, yes!" he ejaculated, "we 're all bad men
here."
My three captors made no delay; but as for their fallen friend, they
paid no heed to him. Only Farrell took the cartridges from his belt and
ran his hands through the pockets, which contained a knife, a specimen
of ore, two five-dollar bills, and a fifty-cent piece.
For my part, I had the utmost difficulty in getting to my legs, and
still more in descending the face of the precipice. I noticed, too,
that Farrell kept close by my side, as though he thought still that it
was as well to have me between Apache Kid and himself.
Just as we came down the rise, there was Mr. Pinkerton leading the
horses along toward us.
"Say!" cried Farrell. "What about him?" And he pointed to Pinkerton.
"O!" said Apache Kid. "He wants nothing to do with this expedition
whatever."
Then suddenly Farrell's face lighted with a new thought. "And he goes
down to the camps and blabs the whole thing, eh?"
"I believe he won't say a word about it,--neither he nor the half-breed
here."
Farrell seemed scarcely convinced, and we went down in silence a little
way. Then suddenly he said: "I think you 've got some game on. Say! do
you swear you are on the square with us?"
Apache Kid frowned on him and, "I give you my word of honour," said he;
and so we came ploughing through the loose soil and sand into the
sun-dried grass, and thence on to the level below, where Mr. Pinkerton,
now aided by his half-breed follower who had gone on down-hill and
mounted his horse, was bunching the horses together. And over all was
the sky with the daylight fading in it.
*CHAPTER XIII*
_*In Which Apache Kid Behaves in His Wonted Way*_
What with the pains upon my forehead, caused by the blow I had come by
when my unfortunate horse put his foot in that unchancy burrow and sent
me flying; what with that pain and the ache of my legs, and something
else that was not a pain, but worse than a pain, I had scarcely the
heart, I fear, to give Mr. Pinkerton as kindly a smile of welcome as he
had in store for me on seeing me again alive.
That other thing I speak of as worse than a pain was a horrible
nervousness with which my hour of torture with the snake had endowed me.
Yes, it can only have lasted about an hour, I think, that hideous
experience, though then it seemed an eternity. But so had it affected
me that when we gathered together on the plateau I paid little heed to
the council of my companions,--had lost interest in their affairs.
Instead, I kept jerking my head into my shoulders, and caught myself
even gasping suddenly and dodging a snake that leaped at me in the
air,--a snake that, even as I sought to evade, I knew was not there at
all,--a mere creature of my harassed and frayed nerves. Mere fancy I
knew it to be, but still I must needs dodge it and blurt out a gasp of
terror again and again.
It was while I was still busied on this absurd performance,--still
standing in the talking group and heedless of the talking,--that I saw
Apache Kid knitting his brows at me, and supposed it was in contempt;
and that caused me to pull myself together and square myself, as a
soldier may do under the eye of an officer. When I did so, I remember
that I seemed to go to the other extreme; in my attempt to master this
nervousness, I caught myself grinning.
It was then that Mr. Pinkerton, who was holding back a little way,
looking on, but not party to our doings, remarked to me, as he caught my
eye again:
"I took a long shot at that horse of yours, sir, and put it out of its
agony when it got its leg broke; but things have been levelling up since
then, and I think men and horses are just on a par again--one horse, one
man."
I laughed hilariously at this saying, as though it were something hugely
amusing. But between you and me, I do not think that Mr. Pinkerton
spoke it from his own kind heart but spoke thus more as some sensitive
men wear a cloak of pride or shyness or a false bombast to protect them
from other men less finely tuned. It was, I believe, only to show a
hard front before these new partners of ours, as villainous a trio as
you ever clapped eyes on, that he spoke in this light way of the doings
of death; because at my laugh I saw him frown as though he regretted
that I could enjoy his bitter jest so fully.
In a dazed way I saw the party mounting; but so great difficulty had I
in gaining the saddle of a horse--whose horse I do not know; I think it
was the mount of the man called Cockeye--that Donoghue came to my side
and held the stirrup and gave me a "leg up" and, "Are you scared, or
what?" he said in my ear, low and angry and with something of contempt.
"You 've made a hash of to-day for us as it is, with goin' and gettin'
that accident. Are you scared o' them fellers?"
"Scared!" said I. "Man! I 've been tortured."
"Been what?" said he, and he got on to that vicious mount of his with
such a viciousness himself, in his pull of the rein and lunge of his
spurs, that I saw Mr. Pinkerton give him a look as who should say: "He's
a devil of a man, that."
But Donoghue crowded his beast to my side and asked me what I meant by
my remark of being tortured, and I told him the whole matter of it as we
rode across the plateau, all lit now with the thin last glow of day.
He listened with his head to one side and his loose jaw tightening and
thrusting out.
"I take back what I said to you," said he. "I take it back right now;
and as for hindering our journey--why that could n't be helped. Better
that we met these fellows right here, face to face, instead of goin' on
unknowing and getting shot by 'em round the fire to-morrow night or
plugged through the windows of the Lost Cabin three nights hence."
This might have given me an idea of how far we had still to go--or
rather should I say, in a country such as this, of vast distance, of how
nigh we already were to our journey's end, had I been much heeding that
evening.
He held out his hand to me across his saddle (I was riding on his left),
and as we shook hands I saw the man Pete look at us with a doubtful eye.
And for a surety there was every reason why these fellows should be
suspicious of us and be wary and watchful of our movements.
That they were three unscrupulous scoundrels--"The toughest greazers
that ever stole stock," as Mr. Pinkerton had phrased it when speaking of
them and their cronies (using the word "greazer" in its loose, slang
sense, not necessarily implying thereby that they were actually
Mexicans, which is the meaning of the name)--that they were capable of
any treachery and cruelty themselves, there was no doubt. And as they
were, so they would be very prone to judge others and were, doubtless,
already thinking to themselves that we three had after all--for the
present at least--the best of the bargain; for had they set upon us and
done away with us, where would have been their chance of coming to the
Lost Cabin? As far away as ever; the Lost Cabin would still have been a
needle in a haystack.
On the other hand, I guessed them already arguing, we would be glad and
even eager to kill them, though they desired to keep us alive--for a
time.
I suppose they took our handshake--Larry's and mine--for a sign of some
understanding between us and scented in it a treacherous design upon
them, for they kept upon our flanks hereafter, at sight of which
Donoghue laughed his ugly laugh and shook his horse forward a step,
sneering at them over his shoulder.
O! We were a fine company to go into camp together, as we did within
half an hour, before the last grasshoppers had ceased their chirring, on
the side of the knoll where was a spring of water, a little pool
overhung by a rock with strange amphibious insects darting away from its
centre to the sheltering banks as we dipped our cans for water to make
the flapjacks.
To any chance observers, happening into our camp at twilight, we would
have seemed nothing more dire than a round-up camp of cow-boys, I fancy,
for after the meal, when pipes and cigarettes were lit and belts let out
a hole or two and boots slackened, there was an air of out-door peace
around the fire.
Yet I need not tell you that the peace was on the surface--fanciful,
unreal. As for me, the snake was leaping in my eyes out of the fire,
when Apache Kid, as calm as you please, struck up a song.
Heads jerked up and eyes glanced on him at the first stave. It seemed
as though everything that any man there could do or say was to be
studied for an underlying and furtive motive.
It was "The Spanish Cavalier" he sang, with a very fine feeling, too,
softly and richly. There is a deal of the sentimentalist about me, and
the air, apart from the words, was ringing in my heart like a regret.
"The bright, sunny day," he sang, "it soon fades away," and after he
ceased the plain had fallen silent. The chirring of insects had gone and
left the valley empty of sound. During all the journey I never heard so
much as the twitter of any bird (except one of which you shall hear
later), so I think that the gripping silence at the end of day must have
been due only to the stopping of the insect life. By day one was not
aware of any sound; but at the close of day, when the air chilled, the
silence was suddenly manifest.
Sure enough, the bright, sunny day was fading and in the silence, when
the voice of the singer ceased, I must needs be away back in the
homeland, counting the hours in my mind, reckoning them up and judging
of what might probably be afoot in the homeland then--and there is
something laughable in the thought now, but I counted the difference in
time the wrong way about and sat sentimentalising to myself that my
mother perhaps was just gone out to walk in the Botanic Gardens, and
picturing my little sister prattling by her side with her short white
stockings slipping down on her brown legs, and looking back, dragging
from my mother's hand, to watch the blue-coated policeman at the corner
twirling his whistle around his finger. Had I not been so wearied and
worn, I would not have made this error in the reckoning. As likely as
not my mother was then waking out of her first sleep, and thinking, as
women do, of my material and spiritual welfare, all at the one time;
perhaps wondering if my socks were properly darned and putting up a
loving prayer for my welfare.
Then the singing ceased, and the cry that I now knew well, the dusk cry
of the coyotes, rose in a howl, with three or four yelps in the middle
of it and the doleful melancholy baying at the close.
I looked round the group at the fire again.
"Well," said Apache Kid, the first to speak, "who's to night-herd the
horses?"
The man Dan rose up at that. It was he who alone of all my tormentors
on the cliff had spoken a word with anything of kindness in it.
"I 'll take the first guard, if you like," said he.
Farrell looked across at Apache Kid.
"One of your side, then," said he, "can take the next guard--share and
share--time about, I guess; eh?"
Apache Kid threw the end of his cigarette into the fire and, drawing out
his pouch, rolled another and moistened it before he replied.
"Why do you talk about sides at all?" he asked. "I thought we were a
joint stock company now?"
"Well, well," snapped Farrell, "I mean one of you three--you or one of
your partners."
"Quite so; I know what you mean. I understand your meaning perfectly."
There was a pause and then said he, taking a brand from the fire and
lighting his cigarette, so that I saw his full, healthy eye shine
bright: "If you are going to talk about sides in this expedition--then
so be it. But I don't think our side, as you call it, will bother with
any night-herding; indeed, I think we need hardly trouble about saddling
up or unpacking or cooking or anything--if you make it a matter of
sides." And he blew a feather of smoke. "I think my side will live
like gentlemen between now and the arrival at the Lost Cabin Mine."
Every eye was fixed anxiously on him.
"You see," he explained, "the fact is, you need us and we don't need
you. It's a case of supply and demand and--seeing you talk of sides,"
he said, with what must have been, to Farrell, an aggravating
insistence, "our side at present is wanted. It's almost a sort of
example of the workings of capital and labour. No!" he ended, with a
satisfied grunt, "I don't think there's any need for me to tend horses
at all, thanks. I 'm quite comfy by the fire."
There was a shrewd, calculating look on Farrell's face as he looked
Apache Kid cunningly in the eye a space. I could wager that he was
making himself certain from this speech that Apache Kid was the
principal in our expedition. I think he really believed that I could
say nothing of the Lost Cabin, even had I desired to, and from the way
he looked then to Donoghue and looked back again to Apache Kid it struck
me forcibly that he was wondering if it were possible that Larry
Donoghue was not "in the know" to the full, but merely of the company in
a similar way with myself.
Then he rolled an eye back again to Apache Kid, and I remembered the
sheriff of Baker City then, for Farrell's words were the very words I
had heard the sheriff use: "You 're a deep man," he said.
"And I 'm quite comfy, too," broke in Donoghue. "Thanks," he added.
"And as for this young man beside me, I think he wants a rest to-night.
A man that's had a snake wriggling at his nose for half of an afternoon
is liable to want a little sleep and forgetting."
Everybody cocked an ear, so to speak, on this speech; but no one of
those who did not understand asked an explanation.
Farrell looked with meaning at Mr. Pinkerton, who sat out of the affair,
but neither he nor the half-breed spoke a syllable, Pinkerton pulling on
his corn-cob pipe, and the half-breed rubbing the silver buckle of his
belt with the palm of his hand, and studying the reflection of
fire-light in it.
"No, no," suddenly remarked Apache Kid, "you could n't ask Mr. Pinkerton
to do that, nor Charlie either. We can't be so inhospitable as to ask
our guests of this evening to night-tend our horses."
"What the hell are you getting on about?" said Farrell, and then, as
though thinking better, and considering that a milder tone was more
fitting, he said: "I never asked them to."
"No, no; you did not ask them to," said Apache, in a mock-conciliatory
tone, and then, with a smile on his lips, he said gently: "But you were
thinking that, and I--know--every--thought--that passes through your
mind, Mr. Farrell."
You should have seen the man Pete at these soft-spoken words.
I must give you an idea of what this fellow looked like. To begin with,
I think I may safely say he looked like a villain, but more of the wolf
order of the villain than the panther; he had what you would call an
ignorant face,--a heavy brow, high cheek-bones, very glassy and
constantly wandering eyes, far too many teeth for his mouth, and they
very large and animal like. And if ever I saw superstitious fear on a
man's face, it was on the face of that cut-throat.
He looked at Apache Kid, who sat with his hat tilted back and his open,
cheery, and devil-may-care face radiant to the leaping
firelight,--looked at him so that the firelight made on his face
shadows, instead of lighting it; for he held his chin low and the mouth
open. His hat was off and only his forehead was lit up. The rest was
what I say--loose shadows. Then he looked at Farrell, as though to see
if Farrell were not at all fearful, and, "Say!" he said, "I 'll take
'herd' to-night."
Farrell turned on him with a leer and laughed.
"I guess you 'd better go first then," said he, "before midnight comes,
and let Dan go second, after a three hours' tend. You 're the sort of
man that is all very good robbing a train, but when you get in among the
mountains with the boodle you get scared. And what for? For nothing!
That's the worst of you Cat'licks."
So Farrell pronounced the word, and the man flung up his head at that
with an angry and defiant air, so that one only saw there the bravo now,
and not the ignorant and superstitious savage. He was on the point of
speech, but Apache Kid said:
"Sir, sir! it is very rude, to say the least of it, to malign any
gentleman's religion. I presume from your remark that you are of the
Protestant persuasion, but my own personal opinion is that you are both
equally certain of winning into hell. If our Roman Catholic friend is
kind enough to offer to relieve us of the monotony of night-herding
duty, we can only thank him."
So Pete rose and tightened his belt, and went his ways; and that in no
less than time, for the horses were already restive, as though the
loneliness of the place had taken possession of them. Of all beasts I
know, I think horses the most influenced by their environment.
"Well, if this don't beat cock-fightin'!" I heard Mr. Pinkerton's voice
behind me, where he lay now, leaning on an elbow; and then he said a
word or two to the half-breed, who rose and departed out of the circle
of the fire-shine.
In a little space he returned, leading his own mount and Pinkerton's by
the lariats which were around their necks, and as he made fast these
lariats to a stone Farrell looked at Mr. Pinkerton across the glow, and
asked him, suspicious as ever, "What's that for?"
"Oh! Just so as not to be indebted to you," replied Pinkerton, and
coming closer to the fire he rolled his one grey blanket round him and,
knocking out the ashes of his pipe, lay down to rest, the half-breed
following suit. But after they had lain down, and when I, a little
later, at a word from Donoghue, suggesting I should "turn in," unpacked
my blankets, which I had found among the pile of our mixed belongings, I
saw the half-breed's eyes still open and with no sign of sleep in them.
"So," said I to myself, "Pinkerton and the half-breed, I expect, have
arranged to share watch and watch, without having the appearance of
doing so."
And indeed one could scarcely wonder at any such protective arrangement
in such a camp as this. Donoghue and Apache Kid, indeed, were the only
two there who could close their eyes in sleep that night with anything
like a reasonable belief that the chances of their awakening to life
again were greater than their chances of never breathing again the
sage-scented air of morning.
*CHAPTER XIV*
_*Apache Kid Prophesies*_
You may wonder how it was possible for me to lie down, to roll myself
round in my blankets, to fall asleep in such a camp, in such company as
that. I, indeed, wondered at myself as I did so, wondered how I came by
the heedlessness, for I cannot call it courage, that allowed me to
compose myself to slumber. Anything might have happened in the dark
hours, murder and sudden death; but I was excessively fatigued; my body
ached; my nerves too were unstrung by the torture of the cliff. Sleep I
must and sleep I did, on the instant that I stretched myself and laid
down my head. Perhaps the sigh with which I dismissed from my mind the
anxieties that might have kept me wakeful was more of a prayer than a
sigh.
Across the fire of smaller branches that had cooked our supper, in the
preparing of which each took part, a great log was laid, so that no
replenishing would be necessary.
It was the sound of Donoghue's voice that woke me to blue night,
starshine, and the red glow of the log. His position was unaltered. I
could have believed that he had not moved a muscle since my lying down,
and the stars told me I had slept some time. He reclined with his legs
crossed, his feet stretched to the glow, his hands in his coat pockets,
and his unloosened blanket-roll serving for a cushion to the small of
his back.
"There ain't no call for me to turn in," he was saying. "I don't have
to turn in to please you."
I snuggled the blankets under my chin and looked to see who he was
addressing.
All the others of the company were lying down, but it was evidently
Farrell who had made the prior remark, for he now worried with his
shoulders in his blankets to cast them from him, and rising on an elbow,
said: "O, no! You don't have to. But it looks to me mighty like as if
you was scared of us--that you don't lay down and sleep. We 're square
enough with you."
Donoghue looked at him in that insolent fashion of opening the eyes
wide, and then almost shutting them, and sneered:
"Well, well, what are you always opening your eyes up a little ways and
peepin' at one for? One would think you was scared o' me; and that
feller there, that Dan, or what you call him, he keeps waking up and
giving a squint around, too. You 're square with us? We 're square
with you, ain't we?"
Farrell flung the blankets back from him and cried out: "Do you know
what I'm goin' to tell you? I would n't trust you, not an inch. I got
my gun here ready, if you try any nonsense."
The gleam of an unholy satisfaction was on Donoghue's face then, and he
cried out: "Well, sir, if I find a man trust me, I 'm square with him;
but if he don't trust me, I don't play fair with him. That's right, I
guess, ain't it?"
This, to my mind, was a very faulty morality, but it seemed not so to
Farrell.
"Yes," he agreed. "I reckon that's generally understood," and then he
showed quite a turn for argument on his own plane of thought.
"But you don't trust me, neither," said he, "and if I was payin' you
back the way you talk about, I 'd up and plug you through the head."
Argument was not in Donoghue's line but he cried out:
"And where would I be while you were tryin' it on?"
Farrell did not answer, and in the pause Donoghue did indeed continue
the argument, unwittingly, to its logical conclusion:
"No, no, my boy," he said, "you would n't plug me here. You would n't
plug me till we got you what you wanted. O! I know your kind well.
You thought you held the trumps when you corralled the lad there," and
he jerked his head in my direction, "But you did n't."
"It seems to me like as we did," said Farrell, with a vindictive leer,
"else why are we here now?"
"Here now?" snapped Donoghue. "Why, you're here because my partner is
so durned soft, times. He would n't--go--on--and leave the lad," he
drawled contemptuously. "What good was the boy to you, anyhow?" he
asked. "Looks as if you knew you were trying it on with a soft, queer
fellow. I 'd ha' let you eat the boy if you wanted and jest taken a
note o' your ugly blue mug in my mind and said to myself: 'Larry, my
boy, when you see that feller ag'in after you 've got through with this
Lost Cabin Mine--you shoot him on sight!'"
"And what if the mug was to follow you up?" said Farrell.
All this while there was no movement round the fire, only that I saw
Apache Kid's hand drawing down the blankets from his face. Pinkerton
and the half-breed were a little beyond Donoghue and lying somewhat back
so that I did not know whether or not they were awakened by this talk.
And just then Dan sat up suddenly, glared out upon the plain to the four
points of the compass, and screamed out:
"The hosses! Where's the hosses?"
We were all bolt upright then, like jumping-jacks, and leaning on our
palms and twisting about staring out strained into the moon-pallid
plain.
Dan leapt to his feet.
"The hosses is gone!" he cried, and he rushed across to the two horses
that were tied with the lariats.
"Lend me a hoss," he cried. "We must go out and see where Pete has got
to with them horses."
"I lend you dis--you sumracadog!" said the half-breed in his guttural
voice and he flung up his polished revolver in Dan's face.
It was Apache Kid who restored some semblance of order to the camp.
"All right, Dan," he said. "Don't worry. It's too late now."
We all turned to him in wonder.
"Pete thought it advisable to take the whole bunch away. He agreed that
it was advisable to make what little capital he could out of his
expedition into this part of the country. On the whole, I think he was
sensible. Yes--sensible is the word," he said, thoughtfully wagging his
head to the fire and then looking up and beaming on us all.
"What you mean?" cried Farrell.
"Just what I say," said Apache Kid. "He simply walked the whole bunch
quietly away five minutes after he bunched them together out there."
"You saw him doin' that! You saw his game and said nothing!" cried
Farrell.
"Even so!" replied Apache Kid.
Farrell glared before him speechless.
"What in creation made him do that?" said Dan, going back like a man
dazed to his former place.
"You mean _who_ in creation made him do that?" Apache Kid said lightly:
"and I have to acknowledge that it was I."
"You!" thundered Farrell. "I did n't see you say a word to him. You
bought him off some ways, did you? How did you do it?"
"O!" said Apache Kid. "I simply gave him a hint of the terrors in store
for him if he remained here. You heard me; and he was a man who could
understand a hint such as I gave. I took him first, as being easiest.
But I have no doubt that you two also will think better of your
intention and depart--before it is too late. He went first. You, Mr.
Farrell, I think, will have the honour of going last."
"I don't know what you mean," said Farrell, like a man scenting
something beyond him.
"No," said Apache Kid. "I understand that. You will require some other
method used upon you. I don't know if it was, as you suggested, the
gentleman's religion that was to blame for it, but he suffered from the
fear of man. That was why he went away. Now you, Farrell, I don't think
you fear man, God----"
"No! Nor devil!" cried Farrell.
"Nor no more do I!" said Dan, turning on Apache Kid. "Nor no more do I.
And if the loss o' the hosses don't cut any figure to you, it don't no
more to us, for we 're goin' through with you right to the end."
But I thought that a something about his underlip, as I saw it in the
shadows of the fire, belied his strong statement. Apache Kid was of my
opinion, for he looked keenly in Dan's face and remarked: "A very good
bluff, Daniel."
"Don't you Daniel me!" cried the man. "You 're gettin' too derned fresh
and frisky and gettin' to fancy yourself."
"That's right. A bluff should be sustained," said Apache Kid,
insolently, and then dropping the conversation, as though it were of
absolutely no moment, he rolled himself again in his blanket. And this
he had no sooner done--unconcerned, untroubled, heedless of any possible
villainy of these two men--than Pinkerton's voice spoke behind me:
"He 's a good man spoiled, is that Apache Kid. I could ha' been doin'
with a son like that."
"I think you 're kind o' a soft mark, right enough," sneered Farrell to
the now recumbent form of Apache Kid. "I think you 're too soft to
scare me."
Apache Kid was up in a moment.
"Soft!" he cried, "soft!"
And on his face was the look that he gave the Italian livery-stable
keeper at Camp Kettle, only, as the saying is, _more_ so.
I heard Donoghue gasp, you would have thought more in fear than in
exultation: "Say! When he gets this ways you want to be back out of his
way."
"Look at me!" said Apache, standing up. "You see I 've got on no belt;
my gun's lying there with the belt. I 've got no knife--nothing. Will
you stand up, sir, and let me show you if I 'm soft, seeing that I have
given you my word--not to kill you?" You should have heard the way
these last words came from him. "Will you stand up and let me just
hammer you within an inch of your end?"
Farrell did not quail; I will do him that justice. But he sat
considering, and then he jerked his head and jerked it again doggedly,
and, "No," he said, "no, I reckon not."
The fire of anger had leapt quick enough to life in Apache Kid, and it
seemed to ebb as suddenly.
"All right," he said. "All right. Perhaps it is better so. It would
dirty my hands to touch you. And indeed," he was moving back to his
place now, "lead is too clean for you as well."
He turned as he reached where his blankets lay.
"Farrell," he said, "it is at the end of a rope that you will die."
*CHAPTER XV*
_*In Which the Tables Are turned--at Some Cost*_
After that peace came, and I dozed again.
It was a shot, followed by a scream, that awoke me; and those kind gods
who guard us in our sleep and in our waking caused me even at that
moment not to obey the sudden impulse to leap up. Instead, I flung my
hand to my revolver and lay flat--and in doing so saved my life.
Beside me, with the first quick opening of my eyes, I saw Donoghue kick
in his blankets, like a cat in a sack, and then lie still, and the
second shot rang in my ears, fired by the man Dan from across the fire
and aimed at me. But truly, it was fated that Dan should go first of
these two who remained with us of his side, as Farrell had called it,
and it was I who was fated to do the deed. Let me put it in that way, I
beg of you. Let me say "fated" in this instance, if in no other, for it
is a terrible thing to slay a man. And then I saw what had befallen,
after my shot had gone home and Dan lay on his face where he had
fallen--dead, with the light of morning, of a new day, just quivering up
the eastern sky, and making the thing more ghastly.
Farrell and he must have quietly whispered over their plan where they
lay--to make a sudden joint attack upon us. Dan's part had evidently
been to put an end to Larry and to me, while Farrell attended to Apache
Kid; for there was Farrell now with a revolver in each hand, and both
were held to Apache Kid's head.
At hearing my shot, for a moment Farrell glanced round, and, seeing that
Dan had failed in his attempt, he cried out: "If you move, I kill Apache
Kid here, right off. Mind now! I kill him--and let the Lost Cabin Mine
slide. We 'll see who 's boss o' this round up!"
And then it suddenly struck me as strange that they had not reckoned on
the other two who were with us,--Mr. Pinkerton and the half-breed. Even
as I was then considering their daring, there came a moan from beside
me. I flung round at the sound, and there lay Pinkerton with his hand
to his breast. Yes; I understood now. That sound that woke me was not
of one shot; it was two,--Dan's first shot at Larry, and Farrell's at
Mr. Pinkerton. But what of the half-breed? I bent to Mr. Pinkerton
and, with my hand under his neck, said: "O, Mr. Pinkerton! Mr.
Pinkerton! O, Mr. Pinkerton! can I do anything for you?"
He looked upon me with his kind eyes, full of the last haze now, and
gasped: "My girl! My girl! You will----" and he leant heavy in my arms.
"I will see to her," said I. "O, sir! this you have got for us. It is
through us that this has happened. I will see that she never wants."
These or some words such as these I spoke,--for I never could rightly
recall the exact speech in looking back on that sad affair.
"You--you are all right, my son," he said, "but if Apache Kid gets out
o' this--he 's--he's more fit like for----"
I saw his hand fumble again on his breast, and thought it was in an
attempt to open his shirt; but then I caught the agony in his eye, such
as you may have seen on a dumb man trying to make himself understood and
failing in the attempt. Something of that look, but more woeful, more
piteous to see, was on his face. He was trying to hold his hand to me;
when I took it, he smiled and said:
"You or Apache--Meg." And that was the last of this kindly and likeable
man who had done so much for us.
But what of the half-breed? Was he, too, slain? Not so; but he was of a
more cunning race than I am sprung of. When I laid back Mr. Pinkerton's
head and again looked around, the half-breed was gone from the place
where he had lain.
There, on his belly almost, he was creeping upon Farrell from the rear.
To me it seemed the maddest and most forlorn undertaking.
There was Farrell with the two revolvers held to Apache Kid's head,
talking softly, too quietly for me to hear, and Apache Kid replying in a
low tone without any attempt at rising. And Farrell cried out: "Nobody
try to fire on me! At a shot I fire too! My fingers is jest ready. I
'm a desperate man."
I crouched low, my breath held in dread, my heart pounding in my side,
at long intervals, so that I thought it must needs burst. I did not
even dare look again at that crawling savage, lest Farrell might perhaps
cast another such quick glance as he had already bestowed on me and,
seeing the direction of my gaze, realise his danger.
The result of such a discovery I dared not imagine. There was enough
horror already, without addition. It was just then that Donoghue gave a
queer little wheezing moan an
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