Front matter (continued 3)

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

ou 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

fter 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 and his eyes opened; but even as I turned to him, "crash!" went a shot and I spun round, a cry on my lips; and there lay Apache Kid, as I had seen him before Donoghue's voice called me away from observing him. But now he had clutched Farrell's right wrist in what must have been a mighty sudden movement, and was pushing it from him. He had leapt sidewise a little way, but without attempting to rise.

There, thrusting away, in a firm grasp, the hand that held the smoking weapon, he still looked up in Farrell's eye, the other revolver before him so that he must have looked fairly into it.

"You durn fool!" said Farrell. "You think I did n't mean what I said? Well, let me tell you that I run no more chances. Oh! you need n't grasp this arm so fierce. I don't have to use it. But, Apache Kid, I 'm goin' to kill you now. I reckon that that there Lost Cabin ain't for any of us,—not for you, for sure. Are you ready?"

"Quite ready," I heard Apache Kid say, his voice as loud as Farrell's now, but more exultant still. It horrified me to hear his voice so callous as he looked on death. I wondered if now I should not risk a shot as a last hope to save him.

"There, then!" cried Farrell.

But there followed only the metallic tap of the hammer,—no report, only that steely click; and before one could well know what had happened, Apache Kid was the man on top, shoving Farrell's head down in the sand, but still clutching Farrell's right wrist and turning aside that hand that held the weapon which, on his first sudden movement, had sent its bullet into the sand beside Apache.

"You goat!" cried Apache Kid. "When you intend to use two guns, see that they both are loaded, or else don't hold the one that you 've fired the last from right in front of——" He broke off and flung up his head, like a wolf baying, and laughed.

He was a weird sight then, his face blackened from the shot he had evaded. But by this time, I need hardly tell you, I was by his side, helping to hold down the writhing Farrell—and the half-breed brought us the lariat from his horse and we trussed Farrell up, hands and feet, and then stood up. And as we turned from him there was Donoghue sitting up with a foolish look on his face and the blood trickling on his brow; and, pointing a hand at us, he cried out, "Come here, some o' you sons o' guns, and tie up my head a bit so as I kin git up and see his hangin' afore I die."

Farrell writhed afresh in his bonds as he heard Donoghue's cry, and in a voice in which there seemed nothing human, he roared, "What! is that feller Donoghue not killed?"

"No, sir!" Donoghue replied, his head falling and his chin on his breast, but eyes looking up, with the blood running into them from under his ragged eyebrows: "No, sir,—after you!" he cried, and he let out that hideous oath that I had heard him use once before, but cannot permit myself to write or any man to read.

CHAPTER XVI

Sounds in the Forest

e hanged Farrell in the morning, for he had broken the compact and he was a murderer. And we laid Pinkerton to his rest in the midst of the plain, with a cairn of stones to mark the spot.

Let that suffice. As for these two things you may readily understand I have no heart to write. And indeed, it would be a depraved taste that would desire to read of them in detail. I know you are not of those who will blame me for this reticence.

When I told Apache Kid of Mr. Pinkerton's last words he was greatly moved, as I could see, though he kept a calm front, and he told the half-breed, who left us then, to convey to Miss Pinkerton our united sympathy with a promise that we would visit her immediately on our return from our expedition.

Then we set out again, a melancholy company, as you will understand, Apache Kid and I carrying all the provisions that he thought fit to take along with us; for Donoghue was too light-headed to be burdened with any load, and lurched along beside us as we made toward the hills that closed in the plain to north, lurched along with the red handkerchief around his head and singing snatches of song now and again. The bullet had ploughed a furrow along the side of his head, and though the bleeding had stopped he was evidently mentally affected by the wound.

It was drawing near nightfall again when we came to the end of this seeming cul-de-sac of a valley, and the hills on either side drew closer to us.

Before us now as we mounted, breathing heavily, up the incline we saw the woods, all the trees standing motionless, and already we could look well into the hazy blue deep of that place.

"I have been here before," said Apache, "but not much farther. We thought we might have to push clear through this place and try what luck there was in getting a shelter beyond. They pushed us very close that time," he said meditatively. But so absently did he speak this that, though I could not make any guess as to who it was that was "pushing" him "close" and who was with him on that perilous occasion, I forbore to question.

You have seen men in that mood yourself, I am sure, speaking more to the air than to you.

He turned about at the entering into the wood and we looked down on the plain stretching below us. A long while he gazed with eyelids puckered, scanning the shelving and stretching expanse.

"Two parties have followed us," he said in a whisper almost. "God grant there be no more, else when we get the wealth that lies in store for us we shall hardly be able to enjoy it for thinking of all it has cost us. It has been the death of one good man already," he added. "Ah, well! There is no sign of any mortal there. We must push on through this wilderness before us."

He stopped again and considered, Donoghue rocking impotent and dazed beside us.

"I wonder where Canlan is to-night," he said, and then we plunged into the woods.

If the silence of the plain had been intense, we were now to know a silence more august. I think it was our environment then that made Apache Kid speak in that whisper. There was something in this deep wood before us that hushed our voices. I think it was the utter lack of even the faintest twitter of any bird, where it seemed fitting that birds should be, that influenced us then almost unconsciously. Our very tread fell echoless in the dust of ages there, the fallen needles and cones of many and many an undisturbed year. It was with a thrill that I found that we had suddenly come upon what looked like a path of some kind. Apache Kid was walking first, Donoghue following, the knotted ends of the handkerchief sticking out comically at the back of his head under his hat.

"You see, we're on to a trail now," said Apache Kid, as he trudged along. "You never strike a trail just at the entrance into a place like this. Travellers who have passed here at various times, you see, come into the wood at all sorts of angles, where the trees are thin. But after one gets into the wood a bit and the trees get thicker, in feeling about for a passage you find where someone has been before you and you take the same way. A week, or a month, or a year later someone else comes along and he follows you. This trail here, for all that you can see the print of a horse's hoof here and there on it, may not have been passed over this year by any living soul. There may not have been anyone here since I was here last myself, three years ago—yes, that print there may be the print of my own horse's hoof, for I remember how the rain drenched that day, charging through the pass here and dripping from the pines and trickling through all the woods."

"It is a pass, then?" said I.

"Oh, yes," he explained. "It is what is called, in the language of the country, a buck's trail. That does not mean, as I used to think, an Indian trail. It is the slang word for a priest. You find these bucks' trails all over the country. They were made by the priests who came up from old Mexico to evangelise and convert the red heathen of the land. I think these old priests must have been regular wander-fever men to do it. Think of it, man, cutting a way through these woods. Aha! See, there's a blaze on a tree there. You can scarcely make it out, though; it's been rained upon and snowed upon and blown upon so long, year in, year out. Turn about, now that we are past it, and you see the blaze on this side. Perhaps the old buck made that himself, standing back from the tree and swinging his axe and saying to himself: 'If this leads me nowhere, I shall at least be able to find my way back plain enough.' Well! It's near here somewhere that I stopped that time, three years ago. Do you make out the sound of any water trickling?"

We stood listening; but there was no sound save that of our breathing, and then suddenly a "tap, tap, tap" broke out loud in the forest, so that it startled me at the moment, though next moment I knew it was the sound of a busy woodpecker.

We moved on a little farther, and then Apache Kid cried out in joy:

"Aha! Here we are! See the clear bit down there where the trees thin out?"

We pushed our way forward to where, through the growing dusk of the woods, there glowed between the boles a soft green, seeming very bright after the dark, rusty green of these motionless trees.

"There is n't much elbow room round about us here to keep off the wildcats," said Apache Kid, looking round into the forest as we stepped forth into this oasis and found there a tiny spring with a teacupful of water in its hollow. The little trickle that went from it seemed just to spread out and lose itself almost immediately in the earth; but it served our purpose, and here we camped.

Donoghue had been like a dazed man since morning, but now, after the strong tea, he was greatly refreshed and had his wits collected sufficiently to suggest that we should keep watch that night, lest another party were following us up. He also washed the wound in his forehead, and, finding it bleeding afresh after that, pricked what he called the "pimples" from a fir-tree, and with the sap exuding therefrom staunched the bleeding again, and I suppose used one of the best possible healers in so doing.

That there were wildcats in the woods there was no doubt. They screamed half the night, with a sound like weeping infants, very dolorous to hear. Apache Kid took the first watch, Donoghue the second, and I the third. I was to waken them at sunrise, and after Donoghue shook me up and I sat by the glowing fire, I remember the start with which I saw, after a space, as I sat musing of many things, as one will muse in such surroundings, two gleaming eyes looking into mine out of the woods—just the eyes, upright ovals with a green light, turning suddenly into horizontal ovals and changing colour to red as I became aware of them.

We were generally careful to make our fire of such wood as would flame, or glow, without shedding out sparks that might burn our blankets; but some such fuel had been put on the fire that night, and it suddenly crackled up then and sent forth a shower of sparks. And at that the eyes disappeared. I flicked the sparks off my sleeping comrades and then sat musing again, looking up on the stars and alternately into the darkness of the woods and into the glow of the fire, and suddenly I saw all along the forest a red line of light spring to life, and my attention was riveted thereon.

I saw it climb the stems of trees far through the wood and run up to the branches. A forest fire, thought I to myself, and wondered if our danger was great in that place. I snuffed the air. There was certainly the odour of burning wood, but that might have been from our camp-fire alone, and there was also the rich, unforgettable odour of the balsam.

But so greatly did the line of fire increase and glow that I stretched forth my hand and touched Donoghue upon the shoulder. He started up, and, following the pointing of my finger, glared a moment through the spaces of the forest. Then he dropped back again.

"It is the dawn," he said, and drew the blankets over his head. "Wake me in another hour."

But I sat broad awake, my heart glowing with a kind of voiceless worship, watching that marvellous dawn. It spread more slowly than I would have imagined possible, taking tree by tree, running left and right, and creeping forward like an advancing army; and then suddenly the sky overhead was full of a quivering, pale light, and in the dim blue pool of the heavens the stars went out. But no birds sang to the new day, only I heard again the tap-tap of a woodpecker echoing about through the woods.

So I filled the can with water, which was a slow process at that very tiny spring, and mixed the flour ready for the flapjacks and then woke my comrades.

I must not weary you, however, recounting hour by hour as it came. I have other things to tell you of than these,—matters regarding hasty, hot-blooded man in place of a chronicle of slow, benignant nature.

On the journey of this day we came very soon to what seemed to be the "height of land" in that part, and descending on the other side came into a place of swamp where the mosquitos assaulted us in clouds. So terribly did they pester us that on the mid-day camp, while Apache Kid made ready our tea (for eatables we did with a cold flapjack apiece, having made an extra supply at breakfast, so as to save time at noon), I employed myself in switching him about the head with a leafy branch in one hand, while with the other I drove off another cloud of these pests that made war upon me.

No sooner had we the tea ready than we put clods and wet leaves upon the fire, raising a thick smoke, a "smudge," as it is called, and sitting in the midst of that protecting haze we partook of our meal, coughing and spluttering, it is true; but the smoke in the eyes and throat was a mere nothing to the mosquito nuisance.

I think that for the time being the mosquitos spurred us forward as much as did our fear of being forestalled in out quest. Mounting higher on our left where a cold wind blew, instead of dipping down into the next wooded valley, we found peace at last. As we tramped along on this crest, where our view was no longer cramped, where at last we could see more than the next knoll before us or the next abyss of woods, I noticed Apache constantly scanning the country as though he were trying to take his bearings.

Donoghue, who was now more like his rational, or irrational self, soon seemed to waken up to his surroundings, and fell to the same employ.

It was to the valley westward, now that we were upon the ridge, that they directed their attention. Donoghue, his loose jaw hanging, his teeth biting on his lips, posted on ahead of us and suddenly he stopped, stood revealed against the blue peak of the mountain on whose ridge we now travelled, in an attitude that bespoke some discovery. He was on a little eminence of the mountain's shoulder, a treeless mound where boulders of granite stood about in gigantic ruin, with other granite outposts dotted down the hill into the midst of the trees, which stood there small and regular, just as you see them in a new plantation at home. He shaded his eyes from the light, looked finally satisfied, and then sat down to await our coming.

Apache stepped forward more briskly; quick and eager we trotted up the rise where Donoghue merely pointed into the valley that had now for over an hour been so eagerly scanned. There, far off, in the green forest bottom, the leaden grey glint of a lake showed among the wearisome woods.

"Ah! We'll have a smoke up," said Apache, with an air of relief. So we sat down on our blanket-rolls in the sunlight. There was a gleam in my companions' eyes, a look of expectation on their faces, and after that "smoke up" Apache spoke with a determined voice, dropping his cigarette end and tramping it with his heel.

"We camp at that lake to-night," said he.

"To-night?" said I, in astonishment, for it seemed to me a monstrous length to go before nightfall; but he merely nodded his head vehemently, and said again: "To-night," and then after a pause: "We lose time," said he, "there may be others:" and we rose to our feet.

"We could n't camp up here, anyhow," said Donoghue, looking round.

It was truly a weird sight there, for we could see so many valleys now, hollows, gulches, clefts in the chaos of the mountains; here, white masts of trees all lightening-struck on a blasted knoll; there, a rocky cut in the face of the landscape like a monstrous scar; at another place a long, toothed ridge that must have broken many a storm in its day. Besides, already, though it was but afternoon, a keen, icy-cold wind ran like a draught there and the voice of the wind arose and died in our ears from somewhere in that long, rocky backbone, with a sound like a railway train going by; and so it would arise and cease again, and then cry out elsewhere in a voice of lamentation, low and mournful.

Apache Kid was looking round and round, his eyes wide and bright.

"I should like to see this in Winter," said he, "when leaves fall and cold winds come."

"There 's no mortal man ever saw this in Winter," said Donoghue, "and no man ever will."

I saw Apache Kid linger, and look on that terrible and awesome landscape, with a half-frightened fondness; and then he cast one more glance at the leaden grey of the lake below and another at a peak on our right and, his bearings thus in mind, led the way downward into that dark and forbidding valley.

I shall never forget the journey down to that lake.

Winding here, winding there, using the axe frequently as the thin trees I mentioned were passed, and we entered the virgin forest below, close and tangled, we worked slowly down-hill; and it was with something of pleasure that we came at last again onto what looked like a trail through the forest. It was just like one of the field paths at home for breadth; but a perfect wall of tangled bush and trees netted together with a kind of tangled vine (the pea-vine, I believe it is called), closed it in on either side.

We were on the track of the indomitable "buck" again, I thought. But it was not so. His trail had kept directly on upon the hill, Apache Kid told me.

"I thought you saw it from the knoll there," he said, and then with a queer look on his face, "but you can't go back now to look on it. Man, do you know that a hunger takes me often to go back and see just such places as that on the summit there? I take an absolute dread that I must die without ever seeing them again. There are places I cannot allow myself to think of lest that comes over me that forces—aye, forces—me to go back again for one look more. I love a view like that more than ever any man loved a woman."

Donoghue looked round to me and touched his forehead and shook his head gently.

"Rathouse," he said: "crazy as ever they make 'em."

"But this is a trail we have come onto, sure enough," I said.

My companions looked at it quietly and I noticed how they both at once unslung their Winchesters from their shoulders, for Donoghue had again taken his share of our burdens.

"Not exactly a trail," said Apache Kid, "at least, neither an Indian's trail nor a buck's trail this time. What was that, Donoghue?"

A sharp crack, as of a branch broken near us, came distinctly to our ears.

Donoghue did not answer directly but said instead:

"You walk first; let Francis here in the middle. I 'll come last," and Donoghue dropped behind me.

Apache nodded and we started on our way.

Neither to left nor right could we see beyond a few feet, so close did the underbrush still whelm the way.

The sound of our steps in the stillness was more eerie than ever to my ears. I felt that I should go barefoot here by right, soundless, stealthy, watching every foot of the way for a lurking death in the bushes.

"Crack," sounded again a broken branch on our left.

"Well," said Apache, softly—I was treading almost on his heels and Donoghue was close behind me—"twigs don't snap of their own accord like that in mid-summer."

We kept on, however, not hastening our steps at all, but at the same even, steady pace, and suddenly again in the stillness—"Crack!"

Again a branch or twig had snapped near by in the thick woods through which we could not see.

CHAPTER XVII

The Coming of Mike Canlan

here was a cold shiver ran in my spine at that second crack, for it was eerie to know that some live thing, man or beast, was following us up through the bushes.

"It's a lion, sure thing," Donoghue said behind me, "and it's goin' at this stalking of us darned careless, too. I wisht we could get to a clear place and give him a chance to show himself."

"Lion?" asked I, astonished.

"Yes—panther, that is," said Apache Kid.

"In the phraseology of the country, that is," I suggested.

Apache looked over his shoulder at me.

"You are pretty cool for a tenderfoot," he remarked. "This is a bad spot for us to be stalked by a beast like that. Let me come behind now, Larry," he continued. "We are getting to a clear place, I think, and he may spring before we get out."

"Not you," said Larry. "Just you go on ahaid and let the lad keep in between."

Here the bushes thinned out considerably and when we reached this opener part Donoghue bade us walk straight on.

"Don't look back," said he. "Let him think we don't know he's followin'. Give him a chance to cross this here glade. We'll stop just inside them further trees and if he shows himself there, we 'll get him then, sure thing. What between men and beasts we suttingly have been followed up some this trip, and I 'm gettin' tired of it. This here followin' up has got to end."

But though we carried out Donoghue's suggestion, crossing the open space, entering again on the path where it continued down-hill in the forest again, and halting there, the "lion" did not show himself.

It was here, while standing a little space, waiting for the panther's appearance, if panther it was that shadowed us, that Apache Kid pointed a finger at the ground before us, where a tiny trickle of water, in crossing the path, made it muddy and moist.

"See the deer marks?" he whispered. "Neat, aren't they? This, you see, is a game trail from the hills down to the lake——"

"No good," broke in Donoghue. "He ain't going to show himself."

So we passed on, and soon the way became more precipitous; the underbrush cleared; the trees thinned; and in a jog trot we at last went rattling down the final incline and came right out with the impetus of that run upon the open ground around the lake, though of the lake itself, now that we were at its level, we could discern little—only tiny grey glimpses, so closely was it thronged about by rushes, and they so tall.

A thousand frogs were singing, making quite a din in our ears, so pent in was the sound in that cup-like hollow. But weary as we were, we rejoiced to have come to our desired camp and soon were sitting fed and contented round the fire.

Of all our camps so far this seemed to me the most secure. Consequently, it horrified me a little when Apache Kid remarked, taking his cigarette from his lips:

"Where do you think Canlan will be to-night?"

Donoghue considered the burning log:

"Oh! Allowing for him getting on to us pulling out, even the day after we left, and allowing for him starting out right then, he can't be nigher here than a day's journey, coming in to the country the way he would do it—over the shoulder of Mount Baker and in that ways."

"He 'll be over behind there, then," said Apache, pointing; "right over that ridge, sitting by his lonesome camp and perhaps half a dozen fellows dogging him up too, eh?"

"Like enough," said Donoghue; "but he's accustomed to bein' dogged up."

"Those who live in glass houses..." remarked Apache Kid, with a laugh that had no real merriment in the ring of it.

Donoghue raised his eyes to Apache's across the fire and laughed back. And they both seemed to fall into a reverie after these words. From their remarks I gathered that they believed that Canlan really knew the location of the mine. He had been simply waiting in Baker City, then, for fear of my two partners. So I sat silent and pondering. Presently Apache Kid snorted and seemed to fling the thoughts aside that had been occupying him. But anon he fell brooding again, biting on his lip and closing an eye to the glow.

It was after one such long, meditative gazing into the glowing and leaping embers that he spoke to me, and with such a ring in his voice as caused me to look upon him with a new interest. The tone of the voice, it seemed to me, hinted at some deep thought.

"Where do you come from, Francis?" he asked. "What is your nationality?"

"Why, I'm a Cosmopolitan," said I, half smiling, as one is prone to do when a man asks him some trivial matter with a voice as serious as though he spoke of strange things.

"Yes; we all are," said Apache Kid, putting aside my lightness. "But is n't it Edinburgh you come from?"

"Yes," said I.

He mused again at my reply, plucking his finger-knuckles, and then turned an eye to Donoghue, who was already surveying him under his watchful brows.

"Shall I tell him?" he asked.

"Tell him what?" said Donoghue, looking uncomfortable, I thought, as though this mood of his partner's was one he did not relish.

"Tell him what we are—how we live—all that?"

From Apache to me and back again Donoghue glanced, and then: "Oh! tell, if you like," said he. "There won't no harm come from telling him. He's safe. He 's all right, is Francis."

Again there was a pause.

"Well," said Apache Kid, finally, ending his reverie. "The fact is that we—Donoghue and I—except upon occasion, when we want to make some sort of a character for ourselves, to show a visible means of support,—the fact is, we are——"

"Spit it out," said Donoghue. "Spit it out. It ain't everybody has the courage to be."

I considered what was coming.

"The fact is," said Apache Kid, "we are what they call in this country road-agents—make our living by holding up stage-coaches and——"

"By gum! we 've held up more nor stage-coaches," cried Donoghue, and began fumbling in an inner pocket with eager fingers.

"And banks," said Apache Kid, gazing on me to see the effect of this disclosure.

Donoghue stretched across to me, his loose face gleaming with a kind of joy.

"Read that," he said. "Read what that says;" and he handed me a long newspaper cutting.

What I read on the cutting was:

"Daring Hold-Up of the Transcontinental. The Two-some Gang again at Work."

"That's us," said Donoghue, gloating. "It reads pretty good, but Apache here says there ain't no sense in the headin' about the two-some gang—says them journalist boys is no good. Seems to me a right slick notice—that's us, anyway."

Apache Kid seemed disturbed, annoyed.

"Well! what do you think?" he said, fixing me with his eye.

"I 'm sorry," said I.

Donoghue threw back his head and laughed.

"It's not the right sort of way to live?" said Apache Kid, questioningly. "You know I can make out a fine case in its defence."

"Yes," I replied. "I have no doubt you could, and that's just what makes me all the more sorry to think of your doing this. Still, I feel that you having told me prevents me stating an opinion."

"If someone else had told——" he began.

"Then I might speak," said I.

"Should it not be the other way about?" he asked, half smiling.

"Perhaps it should," said I. "But if you honour me by telling me, it is enough for me just to say I am sorry. Would you have me preach?"

He looked on me with great friendliness.

"I understand the sentiment," said he. "But I should like you to preach, if you wish."

"Well," said I, "I have no doubt you could, with the brains you have and your turn for sophistry, make out a very entertaining defence for such a life. 'Murder as a fine art,' you know——"

"Murder?" asked Donoghue; but Apache Kid silenced him with a gesture, and I continued:

"But neither you nor those who heard your defence could treat it otherwise than as a piece of airy and misplaced, misdirected wit, on a par with your misplaced love of adventure."

He nodded at that part, and his face cleared a little.

"That but makes me all the more sorry," said I, "to know you are——" I paused. "A parasite!"

I blurted out.

"Parasite!" he cried; and his hand flew down to his holster, wavered, and fell soundless on his crossed legs.

It was the first time he had looked on me in anger.

"What's parasite?" asked Donoghue.

"A louse," said Apache Kid.

"Hell!" drawled Donoghue, and glanced at me. "You need lookin' after."

"There are parasites and parasites," said I. "In this case it is more like these deer-lice we came by in the forest."

We had suffered from these, but I have not said anything of them, for the subject is not pleasant.

"Well," drawled Donoghue. "They are fighters, anyway, they are. You kind o' respect them."

Apache Kid smiled.

"Yes," he said, in a low voice, "it's the right word, nevertheless."

Donoghue jeered.

"Waal! Here's where I come in! Here's the beauty of not being ediccated to big words nor what they mean, nor bein' able to follow a high-toned talk except the way a man follows a poor-blazed trail."

Apache surveyed him with interest for a moment and then again turning to me he heaved a little sigh and said:

"I wonder if you would do something for me after we get through with this expedition? If I were to give you a little wad of bills, enough for a year's holiday at home, I wonder if you 'd go and take a squint at the house where my folks lived when I left home; find out if they are still there, and if not, trace them up? You 'd need to promise me not to let that sentimental side of you run away with you. You 'd need to promise not to go and tell them I'm alive; for I 'm sure they have given me up for dead years ago and mourned the allotted space of time that men and women mourn—and forgotten. It would only be opening fresh wounds to hear of me. They have grieved for my death; I would not have them mourn for my life. But I—well, I sometimes wonder. You understand what I mean——"

"Watch your eye!" roared Donoghue. "Watch your——" but a shot out of the forest sent him flying along the ground, he having risen suddenly and stretched for his rifle.

Instead of clutching it he went far beyond, ploughing the earth with his outstretched hands; and right on the first report came a second and Apache cried: "O!"

He sagged down all in a heap, but I flung round for my revolver—the one with which I had had no practice. I heard the quick, dull plod of running feet and before I could get my finger on my weapon a voice was bellowing out:

"Don't shoot, man; don't shoot! It's Canlan; Mike Canlan. You ain't hostile to Mike Canlan."

I wheeled about, and there he was trailing his smoking rifle in his left hand and extending his right to me; Mike Canlan, little Mike Canlan with the beady eyes, the parchment-like, pock-marked face, and the boy's body.

Had my revolver been to hand, he had been a dead man, I verily believe—he or I. As it was, I leapt on him crying:

"Murderer! Murderer!"

Down came my fist on his head and at the jar his rifle fell from his grasp. The next stroke took him on the lips, sending him backwards. I pounded him till my arms were weary, he lying there with his faded, pock-marked face and his colourless eyes dancing in pain and crying out: "Let up! Let up, you fool! We ain't hostile. It's Canlan!" he cried, between blows. "Mike Canlan."

At last I did "let up" and stood back from him.

He sat up and wiped the blood from his mouth and spat out a tooth.

"Ah, lad," he said. "Here's a fine way to repay me for savin' your life. Think I could n't have laid you out stark and stiff there aside them two?"

My gorge rose to hear him talk thus.

"Easy I could have done it," he went on, "but I didn't. And why?"

He sidled to me on his hams without attempting to rise, and held up a finger to me.

"Why, lad, you saved my life once, so I spared yours this blessed night. That's me, that's Mike Canlan. And see here, lad, you and me now——"

"Silence!" I cried, drawing back from his touch, as he crept nearer.

I had seen murder done, of the most horrible kind. I had seen a big-hearted, sparkling-eyed man, not yet in his prime, struck out of life in a moment. What he was telling me of himself was nothing to me now. I only knew that I had come to like him and that he was gone—slain by this little, insignificant creature that you could not call a man. And I had seen another man, whom I did not altogether hate, sent to as summary an end. I held this man who talked in the sing-song voice at my feet in horror, in loathing. I bent to feel the heart of Apache Kid, for I thought I saw a movement in his sun-browned neck, as of a vein throbbing and—

"O! They're dead, dead and done with," cried Canlan. "If they was n't, I 'd shove another shot into each of 'em just to make sure. But they 're dead men, for Canlan killed 'em. If they was n't, I 'd shove another shot into each of them!"

The words rang in my ears with warning. I had just been on the point of trying to raise Apache Kid; a cry of joy was almost on my lips to think that life was not extinct; but the words warned me and I turned about.

"He's dead, ain't he?" said Canlan, and I lied to him.

"Yes," I replied. "He is dead, and as for you——"

"As for me—nothing!" said Canlan, and he looked along his gleaming barrel at where my heart fluttered in my breast.

"You and me," said he, "has to come to terms right now. Oh! I don't disrespec' you none for not takin' kindly to this. I like you all the better for it. But think of what you 've fallen into all through me. Here 's half shares in the Lost Cabin Mine for you now instead of a paltry third—half shares, my lad. How does that catch you?"

I was not going to tell him the terms I was here on, but I said:

"Put down your rifle then, and let us talk it over."

"Come, now, that's better," said Canlan, cheerily; but I noticed that a nerve in his left cheek kept twitching oddly as he spoke, and his head gave constant nervous jerks left and right, like a man shaking flies away from him, and he sniffed constantly, and I think was quite unaware that he did so. But I did not wonder at his nervousness after such a heinous deed as he had performed that evening.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Lost Cabin is Found

ome, come," said Canlan, suddenly, with an access of the facial twitching and another sudden jerking of his head. "If them 's your blankets, pack 'em up and let's git out o' this, back to my camp the other side of the lake."

I thought it as well to obey him, for if either of these men yet lived and should by any ill fortune emit as much as a moan, I knew that Canlan would make a speedy end then. If they lived, the best I could do for them was to leave them.

And yet there was another thing that I might do—snatch up one of the revolvers and straightway mete out justice—no less—upon this murderer.

But he was on the alert and shoved his Winchester against my neck as I stooped, tying my blanket-roll, with my eyes surreptitiously measuring the distance to the nearest weapon.

"See here," he said, "I can't be runnin' chances with you. I 've let you off already, but I can't be givin' you chances to kill me now. Funny thing it would be for me to let you off for having saved my life once, and then you turn round and plug me now. Eh? That would be a skin kind of a game to play on a man. If that's your gun layin' there with the belt, you can buckle on the belt but keep your hands off the gun, or I gets tired o' my kindness. See?"

He snarled the last word at me, and over my shoulder I saw the leer on his grey face as he spoke. So I packed my blankets without more ado and buckled on my belt, with the revolver in its holster hanging from it, and at Canlan's suggestion took also a bag of flour with me.

"I guess there ain't no call to see what them two has in their pockets by way of dough,"[#] said he. "We don't have no need for feelin' in dead men's pockets now—you and me," and he winked and laughed a dry, crackling, nervous laugh, and stooped to lift a torch from our fire.

[#] Money.

With this raised in his hand he whirled about on me and said: "Now remember, I trusts you," and led off at a brisk pace from the trodden circle of the camp-fire. He had the tail of his eye on me, and I followed at once.

We skirted the lake, keeping under the trees, the torch sending the twisted shadows flying before us and bringing them up behind; and just at the bend of the lake I looked back at that camp, and it brought to my mind the similar, or almost similar, scene I had witnessed in the place of smouldering stumps behind Camp Kettle.

We plodded round the north end of this little lake, and then a horse whinnied in the gloom, and, "Here we are," cried Canlan, and stooping, he thrust the torch into the embers of the fire he had evidently had there and trodden out suddenly. He kicked it together again, and soon the flames were leaping up vigorously. Then he turned and looked on me.

"Well," said he, "you and your friends must ha' travelled pretty quick. Clever lads! Clever lads! Did you know that you was goin' to try and spoil Mike Canlan's game that day I gave you good-bye at Baker City?"

"Not I," I replied. "I did not know then that you knew the secret."

"Ah well, I did! Clever lad Apache thought himself, I guess, slinkin' away down to Camp Kettle and cuttin' in that ways. Well, I ain't surprised he took that way. He knows it well. If all stories is true, he 's played hide and seek in that same valley more nor once with gentlemen that had some desire for to settle accounts with him."

He blinked on me, and then sniffed twice, and suddenly pursed his lips and said:

"But that ain't here nor there. Are you on to take my offer o' half shares in this?"

The whole man was still loathsome to me, and I cried out:

"No, no! And would to Heaven I had never heard of this horrible and accursed quest."

"Well," drawled Canlan, "I 'm gettin' some tired o' havin' no sleep nights for sittin' listenin' for fellers follerin' me up. Not that they 'd kill me in my sleep. I guess I 'm too precious like for that. I 've been keepin' myself up on tanglefoot all the way in, but I did n't bring nigh enough for them mountains, and it's give out. It's give out this last day and a night, and by jiminy, I 'm gettin' them again. I feel 'em comin' on. It ain't good for a man like me wantin' my tonic. Say," and his face twitched again, "I 'm jest holdin' myself together now by fair devil's desperation; when I get to the end o' this journey I 'm gettin' some scared my brain-pan will jest——" he stopped abruptly and began on a fresh track: "Well, it's natural, I guess, for you to feel bad to-night, you bein' partners o' them fellers so recent. But you'll be better come morning. Say, if I lay down and sleep you won't shoot me sleepin', eh?"

"I won't do that," said I.

"That's a bargain, then," he cried, and before I could say another word he threw himself down beside the fire.

He drew his hand over his brow and showed me it wet.

"That's for wantin' the liquor," he said. "A man what don't know the crave can't understand it. I know what I need though. Sleep,—that's what I need; and I 'm jest goin' to force myself to sleep."

I made no reply, but looked on him as he lay, and perceived that his ghastly face was all clammy in the fire-sheen as he reclined in this attempt to steady his unstrung nerves. For me, I sat on, scarcely heeding the noises of the midnight forest. I heard a mud-turtle ever and again, with that peculiar sound as of a pump being worked. That was a sound new to me then, but the other cries—of the wildcats and wolves—I heeded little.

Once or twice I thought of taking a brand from the fire to light me round to the camp across the lake, that I might discover whether, indeed, both my friends were dead. But, as I turned over this thought of return in my mind, Canlan brought down his arms again from above his head where they had lain relaxed, and, opening his eyes, rolled on his side and looked up at me.

"Don't you do it," he said.

"Do what?" I inquired.

"What you was thinkin' of," he replied.

"And what was that?"

"You know," he said, thickly and grimly, "and I know. Two men alone in the mountains can't ever hide their thoughts from each other. Mind you that!"

"What was I thinking of doing, then?" I asked.

"That's all right," he said. "You can't bluff me."

"Well, what then?" I cried, irritated.

He sat up.

"You was thinkin' of goin' right off, right now. No, it wasn't to get in ahead of me at the Cabin Mine. I 'm beginnin' to guess that Apache Kid did n't let you know so much as that. But you was just feelin' so sick and sorry like that you thought o' gettin' up quiet and takin' my hoss there and——"

He was watching my face as he spoke, peering up at me and sniffing. With a kick he got the fire into a blaze, but without taking his eyes from me. Then, "No, you was n't thinkin' that, either," he said, in a voice as of disappointment that his power of mind-reading seemed at fault.

"Derned if I dew know what you was thinkin'," he acknowledged. "Oh, you 're deeper than most," he went on, "but I 'll get to know you yet. Yes, siree; I 'll see right through you yet."

He lay down after this vehement talk, as though exhausted, wiping the sweat from his brow where it gleamed in the little furrows of leathery skin. He was not a pretty man, I assure you.

A feeling as of pride came over me to think that this evil man was willing to take my word that I would not meddle him in his sleep, as I saw him close his eyes once more,—this time really asleep, I think.

But to attempt to return to Apache Kid's camp I now was assured in my mind would be a folly. At a merest movement of mine Canlan might awaken, and if he suspected that I entertained a hope of at least one of my late companions being alive, he might himself be shaken in his belief in the deadly accuracy of his aim.

I pictured him waking to find me stealing away to Apache's camp and stealthily following me up. I even pictured our arrival at the further shore—the still glowing fire, both my companions sitting up bleeding and dazed and trying to tend each other, Canlan marching up to them while they were still in that helpless predicament and blowing their brains from his Winchester's mouth. So I sat still where I was and eventually dozed a little myself, till morning came to the tree-tops and slipped down into the valley and glowed down from the sky, and then Canlan awoke fairly and stretched himself and yawned a deal and moaned, "God, God, God!"—three times.

And I thought to myself that this reptile of a man might well cry on God on waking that morning.

Neither he nor I, each for our own reasons, ate any breakfast. My belongings I allowed him to pack on his horse with his own, so that I might not be burdened with them, the chance of a tussle with Canlan being still in my mind. Then, after we had extinguished the fire, a thought came to me. It was when I saw that he was going to strike directly uphill through the forest that I scented an excuse to get back to my comrades. True, my hope that they lived was now pretty nigh at ebb, for I argued to myself that if life was in them, they would already have managed to follow us. Aye! I believed that either of them, supposing even that he could not stand, would have crawled along our trail at the first light of day, bent upon vengeance; for I had learnt to know them both as desperate men—though to one of them, despite what I knew of his life, I had grown exceedingly attached.

"I 'll go back to our old camp," said I, "and bring along an axe if you are going right up that way. We may need it to clear a way for the horse."

He wheeled about.

"Say!" he said. "What are you so struck on goin' back to your camp for. Guess I 'll come with you and see jest what you want."

He looked me so keenly in the eye that I said at once, knowing that to object to his presence would be the worst attitude possible: "Come, then," and stepped out; but when he saw that I was not averse to his company he cried out:

"No, no. I have an axe here that will serve the turn if we need to do any cutting. But I reckon we won't need to use an axe none. It's up this here dry watercourse we go, and there won't be much clearin' wanted here."

It was now broad day, and as I turned to follow Canlan again I gave up my old friends for dead.

The man's short, broad back and childish legs, and the whole shape of him, seemed to combine to raise my gorge.

"I would be liker a man," I thought, "if I struck this reptile dead." And the thought was scarce come into my mind and must, I think, have been glittering in my eyes, when he flashed around on me his colourless face, and said he:

"Remember, I trust my life to you. I take it that you 've agreed to my offer of last night to go half shares on this. God knows you 'll have to look after me by nightfall, this blessed day—unless there 's maybe a tot o' drink in that cabin."

At the thought he absolutely screamed:

"A tot o' drink! A tot o' drink!" and away he went with a sign to me to follow, scrambling up the watercourse before his horse, which followed with plodding hoofs, head rising and falling doggedly, and long tail swishing left and right. I brought up the rear. And thus we climbed the greater part of the forenoon, with occasional rests to regain our wind, till at last we came out on the bald, shorn, last crest of the mountain.

Canlan marched the pony side on to the hill to breathe; and he himself, blowing the breath from him in gusts and sniffing a deal, pointed to the long, black hill-top stretching above us.

"A mountain o' mud," he said. "That's it right enough. Some folks thinks that everything that prospectors says they come across in the mountains is jest their demented imaginatings like; but I seen mountains o' mud before. There 's a terror of a one in the Crow's Nest Pass, away up the east Kootenai; and there's one in Colorado down to the Warm Springs country. You can feel it quiver under you when you walk on it—all same jelly. See—you see that black crest there? That's all mud. This here, where we are, is good enough earth though, all right, with rock into it. It's here that we turn now. Let me see——"

He took some fresh bearings, looking to the line of hills to the south-east. I thought I could pick out the notch at the summit, over there, through which Apache Kid, Donoghue, and I had come; and then he led off again—along the hill this time, his head jerking terribly, and his whole body indeed, so that now and again he leapt up in little hopping steps like one afflicted with St. Vitus' dance.

Up a rib of the mountain, as it might be called, he marched, I now walking level with him; for I must confess I was excited.

And then I saw at last what I had journeyed so painfully and paid so cruelly to see,—a little "shack," or cabin, of untrimmed logs of the colour of the earth in which it stood, there, just a stone's cast from us, between the rib on which we stood and the next rib that gave a sweeping contour to the hill and then broke off short, so that the mountain at that place went down in a sharp slope, climbed upon lower down by insignificant, scrubby trees. But there—there was the cabin, sure enough. There was our journey's end.

Canlan turned his ashen face to me, and his yellow eyeballs glittered.

"It looks as we were first," he said, his voice going up at the end into a wavering cry and his lips twitching convulsively.

CHAPTER XIX

Canlan Hears Voices

ou should have seen the way in which Canlan approached that solitary, deserted cabin. One might have thought, to see him, that he fully expected to find it occupied.

"Hullo, the shack," he cried, leading his horse down from the rocky rib on which we had paused to view the goal of our journey. I noticed how the horse disapproved of this descent; standing with firm legs it clearly objected to Canlan's leading. The reins were over its head, and Canlan was a little way down the rib hauling on them, half-turned and cursing it vehemently. It could not have been the slope that troubled the animal, for that was trifling; but there it stood, dumbly rebellious, its neck stretched, but budge a foot it would not.

At last it consented to descend, but very gingerly feeling every step with doubtful forefeet, and craned neck still straining against Canlan. Even when he succeeded in coaxing and commanding it to the descent it seemed very doubtful about going out on the hollow toward the shack, and reminded me, in the way it walked there, of a hen as you may see one coming out of a barn when the rain takes off.

"What in thunder's wrong with you?" cried Canlan. "Come along, will you? Looks as if there was somebody, sure thing, in the shack. Hullo, the shack! Hullo, the cabin!" he hailed again.

"——the shack! Hullo, the cabin!" cried out the rib beyond, in an echo.

So Canlan advanced on the cabin, his rifle loose on his arm, right up to the door on which he knocked, and from the sound of the knocking I declare I had an idea that the place was tenanted.

He knocked again.

"Sounds as if there was somebody in here," he said, in a low, thick whisper, so that I thought he was afraid.

He knocked again, rat-tat-tat, and sniffed twice, and piped up in his wheezy voice: "Good day, sir; here's two pilgrims come for shelter."

It was at his third rap, louder, more forcible on the door, which was a very rough affair, being three tree-stems cleft down the centre and bound together with cross-pieces, as I surmised, on the inside,—just at the last dull knock of his knuckles that the door fell bodily inward, and a great flutter of dust arose inside the dark cabin.

"Anyone there?" he asked, and then stepped boldly in.

"Nobody here," he said, bringing down his rifle with a clatter. "One has to be careful approaching lonesome cabins far away from a settlement at all times."

Then suddenly he turned a puzzled face on me.

"Queer that, eh?"

"What?"

"Why, that there door. Propped up from the inside. If there was any kind of a smell here apart from jest the or'nary smell of a log shanty, I 'd be opining that that there number three o' this here push that worked the mine—— Say!—" he broke off, "where in thunder is the prospect itself?"

And out he went of the mirk of the cabin, in a perfect twitter of nerves, and away across to the spur of which I told you.

There I saw him from the door (by which the pack-horse stood quiet now, the reins trailing) kick his foot several times in the earth. Then he turned to see if I observed him, and flicking off his hat waved it round his head and came posting back.

"There 's half a dozen logs flung across the shaft they sunk," said he, "and they're covered over with dirt, to hide it like. Let's get in first and see what's what inside."

There was no flooring to the cabin and at one end was a charred place on the ground. Canlan looked up at the low roof there and, stretching up his hands, groped a little and then removed a sort of hatch in the roof.

"This here," said he, "hes bin made fast from the inside too—jest like the door. Look in them bunks. Three bunks and nothin' but blankets. And over the floor the blankets is layin' too, hauled about."

The light from the hatch above was now streaming in.

"Them blankets is all chawed up," he said.

"Heavens!" I gasped. "Were they driven to that?"

"What devils me," he said, not replying to my remark but looking round the place with a kind of anxiety visible on his forehead, "is this here fixin' up from the inside. There's blankets, picks, shovels, all the outfit, and there's the windlass and tackle for the shaft-head. No," he said, recollecting my remark, "them blankets was n't chawed up by them. Rats has been in here—and thick. See all the sign o' them there?"

He pointed to the floor, but it was then that I observed, in a corner, after the fashion of a three-cornered cupboard, a rough shelving that had been made there. Every shelf, I saw, was heaped up with something,—but what? I stepped nearer and scrutinised.

"Look at all the bones here," I said.

Canlan was at my side on the very words.

"That's him!" he said, in a gasp of relief. "That's him. That's number three. That's him that stuck up the door and the smoke hole."

I turned on him, the unspoken question in my face, I have no doubt.

All the fear had departed from his face now as he snatched up a bone out of one of the shelves.

These bones, I should say, were all placed as neatly and systematically as you could wish, built up in stacks, and all clear and clean as though they had been bleached.

"This here was his forearm," said Canlan, his yellow eyeballs suddenly afire with a fearsome light; and he rapped me over the knuckles with a human elbow.

"Ain't it terrible?" he said.

"It is terrible," said I.

"Ah!" he cried. "But I don't mean what you mean; I mean ain't it terrible to think o' that?" and he pointed to the cupboard, "to think o' comin' to that—bein' picked clean like that—little bits o' you runnin' about all over them almighty hills inside the rats' bellies and your bones piled away to turn yellow in a spidery cupboard."

I stepped back from his grinning face.

"But how do these bones come there?" I said.

"It's the rats," he replied, "them mountain rats always pile away the bones o' everything they eat—make a reg'lar cache o' them; what for I dunno; but they do; that's all."

I stood then looking about the place, thinking of the end of that "number three," all the horror of his last hours in my mind; and as I was thus employed, with absent mien, suddenly Canlan laid his hand on my arm.

"What you lookin' that queer, strained ways for?" he whispered, putting his face within an inch of mine, so that I stepped back from the near presence of him. "That was a mighty queer look in your eyes right now. Say; do you know what you would make? You'd make an easy mark for me to mesmerise. You 'd make a fine medium, you would."

I looked at him more shrewdly now, thinking he was assuredly losing his last hold on reason; but he flung back a step from me.

"O! You think me mad?" he cried, and verily he looked mad then. "Eh? Not me. You don't think I can mesmerise you? I've mesmerised heaps—men too, let alone women," and he grinned in a very disgusting fashion. "Say! If we could only see a jack-rabbit from the door o' this shack, I 'd let you see what I could do. I 'd give you an example o' my powers. I can bring a jack-rabbit to me, supposin' he's lopin' along a hillside and sees me. I jest looks at him and wills him to stop—and he stops. And then I wills him to come to me—and he comes. Mind once I was tellin' the boys at the Molly Magee about bein' able to do it and they put up the bets I could n't—thought I was jest bluffin' 'em, and I went right out o' the bunkhouse a little ways and fetched a chipmunk clean off a rock where he was settin' lookin' at us,—there were n't no jack-rabbits there,—fetched him right into my hand. And then a queer, mad feelin' come over me—I can't just tell you about it—I don't just exactly understand it myself. I closes my hand on that chipmunk and jest crushed him dead atween my fingers. And suthin' seemed kind o' relieved here then, in the front o' my head, right here. The boys never forgot that. They kind o' lay away off from me after that—did n't like it. Yes, I could mesmerise you."

He waved his hands suddenly before my eyes.

"Feel any peculiar sensation at that?" he said.

"Yes," said I.

"What like?" he asked.

"I feel that I 'll not let you do it again," said I.

"Scared like? Feel kind o' slippin' away?"

"No," I said quietly: "not scared one little bit. But I object to your waving your hands within an inch of my face. Any man of grit would n't allow it."

"Well, well, say no more. We 'd better be investigating this yere shack. God! If there was only a drink on the premises. I tell you they 're comin' on again, and when they come on I 'm fearsome—I am."

He looked round the place again and then cried out in a voice of agony:

"Look here! I don't want to lose holt o' myself yet; perhaps a little bit of grub now might help me. I reckon I might be able to shove some down my neck as a dooty. You go and make up the fire outside, do."

He spoke this in a beseeching whine. To see the way the creature changed and veered about in his manner was interesting.

"We ain't goin' to sleep in here to-night, anyways, not for Jo, wi' them mountain rats comin' in on us. It'll take quite a while o' huntin' to get all their holes filled up. You go and make dinner. I could do a flapjack and a slice o' bacon, I think, with a bit o' a struggle and some resolution like."

Anything that might prevent me having a madman on my hands in that wilderness was not to be ignored, so I went out and ran down the slope to where the bushes climbed, and gathered fuel, a great armful, and so came back again and made up a fire.

Water was not so easy to find, but a muddy and boggy part of the hill led me to a spring, and I set to work on preparing food.

With all this coming and going I must have been busied quite half an hour before even getting the length of mixing the dough. Canlan, by that time, had got the windlass out and had lugged it across to the covered shaft beside the spur of outcropping rock that ran down parallel with the ridge in the lee of which I had lit the fire. He went back to the cabin and carried out the coil of rope, and had just got that length in his employ when I called him over for our meal; our evening meal it was, for, intent on our labours, we had not noticed how the sun was departing. All the vasty world of hollows below us was brimmed with darkness. All the peaks and the mountain ridges marching one upon the other into the shadowing east were lit, toward us, with the last light when Canlan sat down to force himself to eat. But I saw he had difficulty in swallowing. The jerking of face and hands, I also perceived, was increasing past ignoring. So too, presently became the fixed stare of his eye upon us as he sat with his hand frozen on a sudden half-way to his mouth.