Part 14

After three days of this plodding we sighted a soaring blue mountain ridge with snow in its high corries and this as I guessed was Baker Ridge; but it took us a good day's journey to come to its base, even though the valley between was but scantily wooded. It was on the afternoon of the fourth day that we came to the eastern shoulder of Baker Ridge and lost sight for a space of the valley behind ere we sighted the one ahead, travelling as on a roof of the world where were only scattered blackberry bushes and rocks strewn like tombstones or tipped on end like Druidical stones.

Then the falling sides of the southern steep came to view, bobbing up before us, and on the first plateau of the descent the sheriff had some private talk with Slim who presently, with a final nod to a final word of instruction, set off with a sweep of his pony's tail and loped away out of sight, going down sheer against the sky over the plateau's verge.

When we, following more slowly, arrived at that point he was nowhere visible, having evidently pushed on speedily. Nor at the third level did we have any sight of him, though now we caught a glimpse of the first sign of civilisation--a feather of steam puffing up away to left among the scrubby trees, indicating the Bonanza mine; and a little beyond it another plume of steam from the McNair mine. A little below us there was a running stream and this being a sheltered fold of the hill, I suppose, defended from the east and north, there grew honeysuckle there and the scent of it came to us most refreshingly. There we sat down, apparently, from the sheriff's manner, to await some turn of events.

*CHAPTER XXIII*

_*The Sheriff Changes His Opinion*_

It was a good two hours after the departure of Slim.

We sat in silence (while the ponies browsed the tufts of grass) watching the clouds of mosquitos hanging in their phalanxes along the trickle of the stream and the bright, gauzy, blue wings of two mosquito-hawks flashing through their midst.

"By the way," said Apache Kid, "do you know if Miss Pinkerton herself has heard of this accusation against me?"

"By now, she is liable to have heard some rumour of it, I reckon," said the sheriff; "but as to whether she heard the news or not at the time of my starting out after you, I dunno."

The implication was amusing.

"Ah, yes, of course," said Apache Kid. "You act so promptly, always, Sheriff."

The Indian, who was sitting a little above us, spoke: "Tree men," he said, "an' tree men and one man come along up-hill beside the honeysuckle."

"That's seven," said Apache Kid.

"Seven?" said the Sheriff, sharply, rising to his feet; "and no waggon?"

"No."

"I reckon this is a deppitation," said the sheriff, as he glared down-hill.

"I don't like deputations of seven," said Apache Kid, looking down to the honeysuckle. "We were visited by one deputation of seven on this trip already; eh, Francis?"

"Ho?" said the sheriff. "You did n't tell me;" but he was not looking at Apache. He was gazing across the rolling land towards those who were coming in our direction, now quite plain to see--seven mounted men, armed, and suspicion-rousing.

"Pity about them guns and shells being lost," said the sheriff, and then he sung out:

"Halt right there and talk. What you want?"

One man moved his horse a step or two ahead of the others, who had reined in.

"We want that man you have there," said he.

"Halt right there," said the sheriff again; and then he remarked to Apache:

"Reckon you 'd rather travel down to Baker City with a reputable sheriff and have an orderly trial before hangin' instead o' hangin' up here-aways without no trial."

"I 'd rather go down----"

"Halt right there!" roared the sheriff.

"--and prove myself innocent of the charge," Apache ended.

"Well, then," said the sheriff, "I reckon here's where we become allies and you gets on the side o' law and order for once. Take that," and he clapped the butt of his Colt into Apache Kid's hand. "Draw close, boys, till I palaver" and he rose from his rock seat, with his Winchester lying on his arm.

"Well, gentlemen," he said. "I reckon you's all aware that you are buttin' up ag'in law and order," he began.

"Law is gettin' kind of tender-hearted," replied one of the newcomers. "We want to see justice done."

"I don't seem to know your face," said the sheriff.

"Oh! We 're mostly from outside your jurisdiction," was the reply. "We jest came along up from the Half-Way House to see that justice is done in this yere matter."

"I don't know 'em," said the sheriff to Apache Kid.

"That's not their fault," said Apache Kid. "I know two of them by head-mark. A fat lot they care for seeing justice done. It's revenge they want on the loss of Farrell."

"What about Farrell?" said the sheriff. "You did n't tell me."

"He was one of the seven I mentioned," said Apache Kid. "But where, might I ask, Sheriff, do you intend to make your fire zone?" And he nodded his head toward the seven who were walking their horses a trifle nearer yet.

"Yes," said the sheriff, "they do creep up some. Dern, if we could only pow-wow with 'em till Slim gets back with the posse and the waggon."

This was the first hint of what business Slim had been despatched upon, but that is by the way. The sheriff apparently was not to be permitted a "pow-wow" to kill the time.

"See here," cried the spokesman of the party, "jest you throw up your hands, the lot of you or----"

"Or what?" said the sheriff.

"Or we come and take him."

"Now, gentlemen," said the sheriff, "I 'm a patient man. If it was n't for the responsible position I holds, I would n't argue one little bit with you, but you know I 'm elected kind o' more to save life than to destroy it."

Apache hummed in the air.

"That's just their objection," said he, softly.

"Pshaw!" said the sheriff. "That was a right poor cyard I played; but it's tabled now and can't be lifted. Get back there! By Jimminy! if you press any closer, we fire on you."

There was a quick word among the seven men and then they swooped on us. I tell you it was a sudden business that. Down went the sheriff on his knee. And next moment the now familiar smell of powder was in my nostrils. Two of the seven fell and their charge broke and they swept round us to left and right.

"Anybody hit here?" said the sheriff. "Nobody! Guess they don't want to hit you, Apache Kid."

"I 'm getting used to that treatment," said Apache Kid. "It 's not the first time I 've pressed a trigger on seven men who wanted my life--rather than my death," he ended grimly.

"You got to tell me about that, later," said the sheriff. "I gets interested in this seven business more and more every time you refers to it."

"I hope to have the opportunity, at least," said Apache, grimly, "to satisfy your curiosity."

"Look up! Here they come again," the sheriff interjected.

There was another crackle to and fro, a quick pattering of hoofs and flying of tails. One bullet zipped on a granite block in front of me and spattered the splinters in my face. The five wheeled and gathered; one of the fallen men crawled away and lay down in the shadow of a rock to look on at the fight, with a sick face.

"They do look like as they were gatherin' again systematic. Pity about that there mud-slide comin' so sudden," remarked the sheriff again, as though talking to himself more than to us; and then again he cried: "Lookup!"

Down came the five then, bent in their saddles, their right hands in air, apparently determined to make a supreme effort. They were going to try the effect of a dash past, with dropping shots as they came. But at a word from one they wheeled, rode back a distance, and then, spinning round, rode back as you have seen fellows preparing for a running start in a race, wheeled, and then came down in a scatter of dust, and a cry of "Yah! Yah!" to their horses.

Next moment they were past--four of them.

"If them four fellows come again," said the Indian, "my name Dennis."

I wondered how Apache Kid could titter at this remark.

I thought perhaps that it was half excitement that caused the laugh. It was not that exactly, however. It was something else.

"As you remarked," said he to the sheriff, "it's a pity about that mud-slide," and he swung his revolver to and fro in a limp hand.

"Don't drop that gun o' yours," said the sheriff in anxiety. "Don't you give the show plumb away. By Jimminy! they are meditatin' another. Say! Guess I 'll palaver again some."

He leaped to his feet and waved the palm of his hand toward the four and then set it to the side of his mouth like a speaking-trumpet.

"I tell yous," he cried, "I 'm not a bloody man. I'm ag'in blood. That's why I give you this last reminder that you 're kickin' ag'in the law and I advise you to take warnin' from what you got already. If I was n't ag'in blood, I would n't talk at all."

Apache Kid tittered again.

"You need n't just tell them it's your own blood you are thinking of, Sheriff."

"No!" said the sheriff, with a queer, flat look about his face--I don't know how else to describe it--"I 've said enough, I reckon. If I seem anxious to spare 'em and warn 'em off some more, they might be liable to tumble to it that we 've put up our last fight, eh?" And he gave a grim, mirthless laugh.

The four seemed uncertain. Then one of them looked down-hill, the other three followed his gaze, and away they flew above us and round in a circle, not firing now, to where their wounded comrade lay by the rock, and after capturing his horse, one of them, alighting, helped him to the saddle. It is a wonder to me that they did not surmise that our ammunition was done, for they came close enough to carry away the others who had fallen. But they themselves did not fire again. They seemed in haste to be gone, and with another glance round and shaking their fists backwards as they rode, they departed athwart the slope and broke into a jogging lope down Baker shoulder.

Apache Kid had moved away a trifle from the rest of us as we watched this departure, and now he sat grinning at the sheriff who was mopping his brow and head.

"Well, Sheriff," he said. "I hope this convinces you of my innocence."

"What?" asked the sheriff, a little pucker at the eyes.

Apache handed him back the revolver that he had received at the beginning of the fight.

"That!" said he.

The sheriff looked at the chambers which Apache Kid's finger indicated with dignified triumph.

"Two shells that you did n't fire!" said the sheriff. "What does that show?"

"That I had you held up if I had liked--you and your Indian--and I passed the hand, so to speak. My friend and I might leave you now if we so desired. There are other ways through the mountains besides following these gentlemen. We could do pretty well, he and I, I think."

The sheriff smiled grimly.

"This here Winchester that's pointin' at your belly has one shell in yet," said he. "It come into my haid that maybe----" and he stopped and then in a voice that seemed to belie a good deal of what I had already taken to be his nature, a voice full of beseeching, he said: "Say, Apache, I got to apologise to you for keepin' up this yere shell. You 're a deep man, sir, but I guess you are innocent, right enough, o' wipin' out Pinkerton. Here comes Slim and the waggon."

Apache looked with admiration on the sheriff.

"Diamond cut diamond," he said, and laughed; and then said he: "And have I to apologise for keeping my two shells?"

"No, sir!" cried the sheriff. "You kept them to show me you was square. I kept my last one because I did n't trust you. I guess I do now."

"We begin to understand each other," said Apache.

"I don't know about understand," said the sheriff. "But I sure am getting a higher opinion of you than I had before."

*CHAPTER XXIV*

_*For Fear of Judge Lynch*_

The long, dragging scream of wheels came to our ears, putting an end to this mutual admiration; and then there came out of the cool of the woods below, where the honeysuckle showed, into the blaze of the hillside, with its grey-blue granite blocks and their blue shadows, a large Bain-waggon drawn by two horses.

On either side of it two men rode on dark horses. The sheriff signed to the cortege to stop, and by the time that we had descended to this party the waggon was turned about.

"Well," said the sheriff to Slim who was driving the team, his horse hitched behind, "you got it from him. Was he kind o' slow about lendin' it?"

"Nosiree," said Slim. "He was settin' on a dump near the cable-house when I got to the mine, settin' shying crusts o' punk at the chipmunks--they 've a pow'ful lot of them around the Molly Magee--and he seemed kind o' astonished to see me. 'Up to business?' he says, 'up to business? You ain't goin' to take him away from me?' he says, meanin', of course, the violinist----"

Apache said to me at that: "Remind me to tell you what he means--about the violinist."

"So I jest tells him no," continued Slim, "and asked him the loan o' one of his waggons, and he says, 'What for?' And I takes him by the lapel o' his coat an' says, 'Can you keep a secret?' and he says then, 'Aha,' he says, 'I know what it is. You got Apache Kid on the hill there and you want the waggon to get him through the city for fear o' any of the boys tryin' to get a shot at him.' Says I: 'Who told you? Guess again.' And he says he reckoned he would lend me the waggon, and right pleased" (Slim shot a meaning look at Apache Kid), "but as for keepin' quiet, that was beyond him, he said."

"Dern!" said the sheriff. "So he 'll be telling the Magee boys and havin' 'em comin' huntin' after us, like enough, for our prisoner, if feelin' is high about this."

Slim laid a finger to his nose. "Nosiree," said he. "I jest told him if he could n't keep holt o' our secret for three hours, and give us a start, that first thing he knew we'd come along and be liftin' his violinist, some fine day, along with a nice French policeman or sheriff, or what they call 'em there--_grand army_ or something--all the way from Paris."

The sheriff gloated on this.

"That would tighten him up some," said he.

"It did," replied Slim, and would have continued to pat himself on the back for his diplomacy, I believe, but the sheriff turned abruptly to Apache Kid and me and ordered us with a new sharpness, because of the newcomers, I suppose, to get into the waggon; and soon we were going briskly down-hill, the four mounted men riding two by two on either side, the sheriff loping along by the team's side and my pack-horse trotting behind, with Slim's mount in charge of the Indian.

We gathered from the remarks of the sheriff that these four men had been camped down-hill a little way for three days, out of sight of the waggon track, awaiting our coming. Slim had evidently, after securing the waggon, picked them up.

"That violinist," said Apache Kid to me, "that Slim mentioned to the Molly Magee boss by way of a threat, is rather a notable figure here. He was leader of an orchestra in Paris, embezzled money, bolted out here and up at the Molly Magee gets his three and a half dollars a day of miner's wages and keeps his hands as soft as a child's. He could n't tap a drill on the head two consecutive times to save his life."

"What do they keep him for, then?" I asked. "And why do they pay him?" though really I was not much interested in violinists at the time and wondered how Apache Kid could talk at all or do else than long for getting well out of this grievous pass that he was in. And, from his own lips, I knew he thought his condition serious.

"Well," said he, "the reason why gives you an idea of how very stiff a miner's lot is in some places. The Molly Magee mine is a wet mine, very wet, and it lies in a sort of notch on the hill where the wind is always cold. Crossing from the mine to the bunkhouse men have been known to take a pain in the back between the shoulder-blades, bend forward, and remark on the acuteness of it and be dead in three hours--of pneumonia. It's a wet mine and a cold hill. This violinist is just a Godsend to the owners. Instead of having to be content with whoever they can get to work the mine for them they have the pick of the miners of the territory; even most of the _muckers_ in the mine are really full-fledged miners, but are yet content to take muckers' wages--and all because of this violinist. He plays to them, you see, and his fame has gone far and wide over the territory. The Molly Magee, bad mine though she is, with a store of coffins always kept there, never lacks for miners. That's what they keep our violinist for."

But we were jolting well down-hill now and soon caught glimpses of Baker City between the trees.

"I reckon you better lie down in the bottom of that there waggon," said the sheriff, looking round, his left hand resting on his horse's quarters. "When they see you it might rouse them."

"Sir!" said Apache (it was the first word he had spoken, apart from his talk with me, since the guard joined us), "I 'm innocent of this charge, and I want to live to disprove it, not for my own honour alone. For many reasons, for many reasons I want to disprove it. But I 'm damned if I grovel in the bottom of a waggon for any hobo in Baker City!"

The sheriff said not a word in reply, just nodded his head as though to say, "So be it, then," stayed his horse till the waggon came abreast, leant from his saddle and spoke a word to Slim, who suddenly emitted a yell that caused the horses to leap forward.

The guard on either side had their Winchesters with the butts on their right thighs--and so we went flying into Baker City, the sheriff again spurring ahead; so we whirled along, with a glimpse of the Laughlin House, dashed down that street, suddenly attracting the attention of those who stayed there, and they, grasping the situation after a moment's hesitation, came pounding down on the wooden sidewalks after us.

So we swept into Baker Street, where a great cry got up, and men rose on the one-storey-up verandahs of the hotels and craned out to look on us; and the throng ran on the sidewalks on either side.

Apache Kid had a sneer beginning on his lips, but that changed and his brows knitted as a man who, on toting up a sum, finds the result other than he expected. For those, who saw our arrival waved their hats in air and cheered our passage; and it was with a deal of wonder and astonishment that I saw the look of admiration on the brown faces that showed through the dust we raised. To me it looked as though, had these men cared to combine to stop our progress, it would not have been to hale Apache Kid before Judge Lynch, but rather to have taken the horses from the waggon, as you see students do with the carriage of some man who is their momentary hero, and drag us in triumph through the city.

The sheriff had expected to find the city enraged at us, anxious to do "justice" in a summary fashion.

This cheering must have puzzled him. It certainly puzzled us.

*CHAPTER XXV*

_*The Making of a Public Hero*_

An old, bowed greybeard, with an expressionless, weather-beaten mask of a face, closed the gate into the "lock-up" after us as we swept into the square. I remember the jar with which that massive gate closed, but somehow it did not affect me as I thought it should have done. Perhaps the reason for this absence of awe was due to the fact that the murmur of voices without, as of a concourse gathering there, was not a belligerent murmur.

"If Judge Lynch goes to work like this," said I to myself, "he has a mighty cheerful way of carrying out his justice on those who offend him."

But I saw that the sheriff and Slim and the guard also were somewhat "at sea," at a loss to account for the manner of our reception. The sheriff flung off his horse and marched into the gaol building, I suppose to see that the entrance into the office was closed. We remained still in the waggon.

Slim chewed meditatively and spat in the sand of the patio, or square--familiarity I suppose breeding contempt--and to the old greybeard, who had closed the gate on our entrance, and now stood by the waggon clapping the quick-breathing horses, he said: "Well, Colonel, you know how them turbulent populace acts. You hev seen some turbulent populaces in your time, Colonel. What does this yere sound of levity pertend?"

"You mought think from the sound they was electin' a new mayor, eh?" said the old man addressed as colonel. "B'ain't a hangin', for sure," and at these words I impulsively laid my hand on Apache Kid's forearm and pressed it; but the colonel at the same moment tapped Apache Kid on the small of the back, and he turned round to find that worthy holding up a leathery hand and saying, "Shake."

"With pleasure," said Apache Kid. "It is an honour to me to shake hands with you, Colonel."

The old man seemed to enjoy being addressed in this flattering fashion, which doubtless Apache Kid knew; for after the hand-shaking, when the colonel waddled away to the horses' heads to begin unhitching, a task in which Slim promptly assisted (I think more to ask questions, however, rather than to share the work), Apache Kid remarked to me:

"He 's a great character, that; he goes out about town now with the chain-gang; you must have seen him trotting behind them, with his head bowed, squinting up at his flock from the corners of his eyes, his rifle in hand. That's the job he gets in the evening of his days; but if any man could make your hair curl, as the expression is, that old man could do it with his yarns about the days when everything west of the Mississippi was the Great American Desert. He seems to be congratulating me on something. Whether he thinks I 'm one of the baddest bad men he 's ever seen, or whether----"

It was then that the sheriff came slowly down the three steps into the square.

"You two gentlemen," said he, "might be good enough to step this way. And say, Slim! That there pack-horse is jest to be left standing, meanwhile. I reckon the property on its back ain't come under the inspection of the law yet--quite."

I could have cried out with joy; not for myself, for the sheriff had led me to believe all the way that I had got mixed up with this "trouble" on the less objectionable side,--the right side. It was for Apache Kid that my heart gladdened. Yet he, to all appearance, was as little affected by this ray of hope as he had been by the expectation of "stretching hemp."

He swung his leg leisurely over on to the tire of the wheel, stepped daintily on to the hub, and leaped to the ground.

"At your service, Sheriff," said he, and I followed him.

I noticed that the sheriff had again assumed his ponderous frown, a frown that I was beginning to consider a meaningless thing,--a sort of mere badge of office. He led us into a white-painted room, where a young lady habited plainly in black sat, with bent and sidewise head. And we were no sooner into the room, hats in hand, than the door closed behind us and we heard the sheriff's ponderous tread depart with great emphasis down an echoing corridor.

The young lady, as you have surmised, was Mr. Pinkerton's daughter; and there was a wan smile of welcome on her saddened face as she looked up to us.

We stood like shamed, heart-broken culprits before her; and I know that my heart bled for her.

She was so changed from the last time I had seen her. The innocent expression of her face, the openness and lack of all pose, were still evident; but these things served to make her lonely position the more sad to think of. She was like a stricken deer; and her great eyes looked upon us, craving, even before she spoke her yearning, some word of her father.

"Tell me," she said. "Charlie has told me--in his way. Oh! It is a hard, bitter story, as it comes from him."