Part 10

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*_

There 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*_

"Come, 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.