Part 15

"To my mind," said Apache Kid, in a soft voice, "it is at once one of the saddest stories and one of which the daughter cannot think without a greater honouring of her father."

Her hungering eyes looked squarely on him, but she spoke not a word.

"To me," he said, "his passing must be ever remembered with very poignant grief; and to my friend"--and he inclined his head to me--"it must be the same."

I thought she was on the brink of tears and breaking down, and so, I think, did he; for as I looked away sad (and ashamed, in a way), he said: "God knows how I feel this!"

I think the interjection of this personal cry helped her to be strong to hear She tossed the tears from her eyes bravely, and he went on:

"When I think that he died through simple disinterested kindness, and that that kindness, that was his undoing, was done for me--and my friends," he said in a lower tone, "then, though it makes me but the more sorrowful, I feel that"--he spoke the rest more quickly--"he died a death such as any man might wish to die. It was a noble death, and he was the finest man----"

"Oh!" she cried, "but I--I--it was I who bade him follow you."

Apache Kid's eyes were staring on the floor; and in the agony of my heart, whether well or ill advised I do not know, I said:

"Your name was the last on his lips."

Her face craved all that could be told; and I told her all now, she growing calmer, with bitten lips, as I, feeling for her grief, found the more pain.

Then Apache Kid spoke, and I found a tone in his voice,--I, who had come to know him, being cast beside him in the mountain solitudes,--that made me think he spoke what he did, not because he really did believe it, but because he thought it fit to say.

"It may seem strange," said he, "to hear it from my lips, as though I desired to lighten my own regret, but I think our days are all ordained for us; and when those we love have been ordained to unselfishness, and to gain the crown of unselfishness, which is ever a crown of thorns, we can be but thankful--though at the moment we dare not say this to ourselves."

He looked dumbly at me, pleadingly, I thought. I had an idea that his eyes besought something of me--but I knew not what; and then he turned to her and took her hand ever so fearfully, and said:

"You will remember that we have a charge from him, as my friend has told you; and indeed, it was not necessary that the charge should have been laid on us." He dropped her hand, and looking at me, said: "I believe we both would have considered it a privilege to in some slight way----" he seemed to feel that he was upon the wrong track, and she said:

"Oh! That is nothing. Now that I have heard it all from you it is' not--not so cruel as Charlie's account. I think I must go now, and I have to thank you for being so truthful with me and telling me it all so plainly."

She turned her face aside again and we perceived that she would be alone. So we passed from the room very quietly and saw the sheriff at the end of the corridor beckoning us, and went toward him.

"She hes told you, I guess," said he, "that the case is off."

Apache shook his head.

"Pshaw!" said the sheriff. "What she want with you?"

"To hear how Mr. Pinkerton died."

"But she knew."

"Yes," said Apache Kid, "as a savage saw it."

The sheriff puckered his heavy mouth and raised his eyes.

"Sure!" said he. "That's what. Pretty coarse, I guess. You would kind o' put the limelight on the scene."

"Sir, sir!" said Apache Kid. "We have just come from her."

"I beg your pardon, gen'lemen," he said. "I understand what you mean; I know--women and music, and especially them songs about Mother, and the old farm, and such, jest makes me _feel_ too, at times. I understand, boys, and I don't mock you none. And that jest makes me think it might be sort of kind in you if you was goin' out and gettin' them cheerin' boys out there some ways off, lest she hears them cheerin' an' it kind o' jars on her."

"Then I am free?"

"Yap; that's what," said the sheriff. "She rode up here with that Indian trailer feller when the news spread. The colonel tells me that it was a fellow, Pious Pete, hetched the story out. It was two strangers to me came to inform me about the killing of Pinkerton--said they saw you do it from out a bush where they was camped, and would have gone for you but they had gone busted on cartridges and you was heeled heavy. They put up a good enough story about them bein' comin' back from a prospectin' trip, and had it all down fine. So I jest started right off."

"But how did you know what way to come for us?" asked Apache Kid.

"Oh, well, you see, I had been keepin' track of Canlan. I hed lost sight o' you, and when I heard you was in the hills away over there, and also knew how Canlan had gone out over Baker shoulder, I began to guess where The Lost Cabin lay. It was handier like for me to start trackin' Canlan than to go away down to Kettle with them fellows and into the mountains there, and try to get on to your trail where they said you had buried Mr. P."

Apache Kid nodded.

"So I left them two here to eat at the expense o' the territory till my return. It was the colonel got onto them fust--recognised 'em for old friends of a right celebrated danger to civilisation which his name was Farrell."

"Ah!" said Apache Kid.

"So I hear now, when I comes back, anyway," said the sheriff. "Then along comes Miss Pinkerton, and when they see her on the scene, well, why they reckon on feedin' off this yere territory no more. The colonel is some annoyed that they did n't wait on and try to hold up their story. I reckon they either had not figured on Miss P., or else had surmised she 'd not raise her voice ag'in' your decoratin' a rope. But I keep you from distractin' them boys out there and they starts cheerin' ag'in. After you 've kind o' distributed them come back and see me. I 'm kind o' stuck on you, Apache. I guess you 'll make a good enough citizen yet--maybe you might be in the running yet for sheriff o' Carson City within the next few years."

But a renewed outbreak of the cheering brought a frown to Apache Kid's face and sent him to the door speedily, with me at his heels.

The sheriff opened the door and out stepped Apache Kid. The first breath of a shout from the crowd there he stopped in the middle. What his face spoke I do not know, being behind him; but his right thumb pointed over his shoulder, his left hand was at his lips, I think,--and the cry stopped.

"Gentlemen," he said, and broke the cry that threatened again to rise with a raised hand; "the lady within"--he got to the core of his remark first--"has her own sorrow. We must think of her."

You could hear the gruff "That's what," and "That's no lie," and "That's talking," and see heads nodded to neighbour's heads in the crowd.

But the question was how to get away? Apache Kid stepped down to the street level and then, before we knew what was come to us we were clutched by willing hands and, shoulder high, headed a silent procession tramping in the dust out of ear-shot of the jail--that the woman within might not feel her sorrow more bitter and lonely hearing the cheers that were given to the men who had "wiped out the Farrell gang."

So much the populace knew had happened. That much had leaked out, and the least that was expected of Apache Kid was that he would get out on some hotel verandah and allow himself to be gazed upon and cheered and make himself for a night an excuse for "celebration" and perhaps, also, in the speech that he must needs make, give some slight outline of how Farrell _got it_--to use (as Apache Kid would say) the phraseology of the country.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

_*Apache Kid Makes a Speech*_

There was a good deal of the spirit of Coriolanus in Apache Kid, and he knew the worth of all this laudation.

When we at last found ourselves jostled up onto the balcony of that saloon which I spoke of once as one of the "toughest" houses in Baker City, that very saloon at the door of which I had beheld the sheriff of Baker City give an example of his "smartness," the throng was jostling in the street and crying out:

"What's the matter with Apache Kid?--He's all right!"

Both question and answer in this cry were voiced always in one, not one man crying out the question and another replying, and it made the cry seem very droll to me.

Apache Kid was thrust to the front and the crowd huzzahed again and shouted: "Speech!" And others cried out: "Tell us about Farrell's gang."

So Apache Kid stepped to the rail and raised his head, and, "Gentlemen," he began, "this is a great honour to me;" and they all cried out again.

"If it is not," said he, "it should be."

I think the majority took this for humour and they laughed and wagged their heads and looked up smiling, for more.

"When I think of how so shortly ago I merited your disapproval and now, instead of gaining that, am welcomed so heartily and effusively, I cannot but feel how deeply I am indebted to all the citizens--" he paused and I heard him laugh in his throat, "of our progressive and progressing city."

They gave vent to a bellow of pleasure and some cried out again: "Farrell! Farrell! Tell us about Farrell."

"I must appeal to the sense of propriety," he said, "for which our western country is famous. In the West we are all gentlemen."

There was a cry of: "That's what!"

"And a gentleman never forces anyone to take liquor when he does not want to, never forces anyone to disclose his history when he does not want to. The gentleman says to himself, in the first instance, 'there is all the more for myself.' In the second case he knows that his own past might scarcely bear scrutiny. Ah well! As we are all gentlemen here I know that with perfect reliance in you I can say that I had rather not speak about Farrell and his gang."

There was a slight murmur at this.

"There are men of the gang still in the territory. As you are now aware, it was they who came to you with a cock-and-bull story about me. In your desire to further law and order in this progressive Baker City you rightly decided that I must pay the penalty for the deed you believed that I had done."

He paused a moment and then continued in another tone:

"Now there is nothing I regret more than the sad death of Mr. Pinkerton. He was a man we all honoured and respected. I am glad you do not now believe that I was his slayer. With those who raised that calumny against me--should I meet them--I will deal as seems fit to me."

A great cheer followed this.

Apache Kid cleared his throat.

"Men of Baker City!" he cried, "I wish, finally, to thank you for this so exuberant expression of your regret that you believed me guilty."

They took this better than I expected. A cheer in which you heard an undercurrent of rich laughter filled the street and drowned his last words:

"I bear you no ill will."

He bowed, backed from the balcony-rail into the saloon, touched me on the arm where I stood by the door, and before those who had followed us in well knew what we were about, we had run through the sitting-room that gave out on that balcony, gained the rear of the house, and were posting back to the jail by the rear street.

But there, relieved at last of the anxiety that had held me together all the way from the Lost Cabin Mine, knowing now that my friend was safe, all the vigour seemed to leave me.

My memory harked back to the nights in the forests on the hillsides, to the attack upon us on the shoulder of Baker Ridge, to the mud-slide, to the night of Canlan's madness, and the previous night of his onslaught on our camp. Larry Donoghue loomed in my mind's eye, large-framed, loose-limbed, heavy-mouthed. Again I saw the summit over which we passed, the Doreesque ravines and piled rocks, the forest trail, the valley where Mr. Pinkerton lay, on the cliff of which I had faced the terrors of the snake. I saw the Indians trooping at the ford, the dead men lying in the wood at Camp Kettle, the red-headed man in the Rest House, the loathsome "drummer" at the Half-Way House,--and all the while the sheriff's voice was in my ears and sometimes Apache's replying.

My brain was in a whirl, and I heard the sheriff say:

"That boy is sick looking."

He said it in a kind, reassuring voice, and I knew that I was in the home of friends, and need no longer keep alert and watchful and fearful. My chin went down upon my breast.

I had a faint recollection of fiery spirits being poured down my throat, and then of being caught by the arm-pits and lifted and held for awhile, and of voices whispering and consulting around me. Then I felt the air in my face, and came round sufficiently to know I was in the street, and the dim ovals of faces turned on me, following me as I was hurried forward at what seemed a terrible speed, and then I opened my eyes to find myself in a room with the blind down at the open window.

It was night time, for the room was in darkness, and I lay looking at a thin cut in the yellow blind, a cut of about three inches long, through which the moonlight filtered; and as I looked at it I saw it begin to move with a wriggling motion, and even as I looked on it it stretched upward and downward from either end. At the top ran out suddenly two horizontal cuts, the lower end split in two, and ran out left and right, and then it all turned into the form of a man like a jumping-jack, with twitching legs and waving arms. A head grew out of it next, and rolled from side to side; it was the figure of Mike Canlan. I turned my head on the pillow and groaned.

"Heavens!" I cried, "I am haunted yet by this."

And then a great number of voices began whispering in a corner of the chamber. I cried out in terror, and then the door opened and a woman entered, carrying a candle, shaded with one hand, the light of it striking upon her freckled face and yellow hair.

It was Mrs. Laughlin, and she sat down by me and took my hand, feeling my pulse, and ran her rough palm across my brow. She may have been a belligerent woman, and had many "tiffs" with her husband, but I cannot tell you how soothing was her rough touch to me then,--rough, but extremely kind.

The whisperings kept on, but very faint now,--fainter and fainter in my ears like far echoes, and, holding her bony hand, I fell asleep.

The fever of the mountains, the weariness of the way, the fear of pursuit, the smell of powder, and the sight of dead men's eyes,--all these I had braced myself against. But now I steeled myself no longer. Now I rested, I, who had feared much and yet been strong (which I have heard persons say is the greatest form of bravery,--the coward's bravery), I rested fearless, clinging to this worn woman's hand.

*CHAPTER XXVII*

_*The Beginning of the End*_

I feel somehow that I have to apologise for "giving in" that way. I should have liked to figure before you like a cast-iron hero. But when I set out to tell you this story I made up my mind to tell the truth about all those concerned in it--myself included.

I could not understand how Apache Kid kept so fresh through it all. But, of course, you remember what he told me of his life, and he was, as the saying is, "hard as nails." Yet he avoided commiserating me on my condition, being a man quick enough to understand that I resented this break-down. He even went the length of telling me, as he sat in my room, that he felt "mighty rocky after that trip," himself. And when the doctor pronounced that I might get up, he told me that I was getting off very easily.

On two points I had to question Apache Kid and his answers to my questions gave me a further insight into his character. The first of these matters was regarding the wealth we had brought with us from the Lost Cabin Mine.

"I have done nothing about it yet," said he. "I thought it advisable for us to go together to the bank."

I looked my surprise, I suppose.

"Then you have no idea what it amounts to yet?" I asked.

"No," said he. "You know it will neither increase nor diminish with waiting."

"But why did you wait?"

"O," he said lightly, "if a man cannot wait for his partner getting well, and do the thing ship-shape, he must be very impatient."

"You don't seem anxious, even, to know what you are really worth."

"I fear not," said he. "O, man, can't you see that once we know, to a five-cent piece, what all that loot is worth, we are through with the adventure and there's no more fun to be had? I'm never happy when I get a thing. It's in the hunting that I find relief."

But there fell a shadow on his face then.

I asked him if Miss Pinkerton was still in Baker City. I declare, he blushed at the very mention of her name. I could see the red tinge the brown of his cheeks.

I often wondered, when Apache Kid spoke, just what he was really thinking. He did not always say what he thought, or believe what he said. He had a way, too, of giving turns to his phrases that might have given him a name for a hardness that was not really his.

"O," he said, "she heard that you were ill and wanted to come and look after you, but you were babbling not just of green fields, exactly--you were babbling of Hell--and I can never get over a foolish idea that early in youth was pumped into me that women do not know about Hell and should not know. I thought it advisable to prevent her coming to see you--and hear you."

I felt my own cheeks tingle to think that I had been raving such ravings as he hinted at.

"And did Mrs. Laughlin----" I began.

But Mrs. Laughlin herself replied, coming quietly into the room.

"Yes, yes," she said, and laughed. "Mrs. Laughlin heerd it all," and then she turned on Apache Kid. "And Mrs. Laughlin was none the worse o' hearing it, Apache Kid," she said, "not because she 's old, but because in gettin' up in years she 's learnt how to weigh things and know the good from the bad, even though the good does look bad. Oh! I know what you are thinking right now," she interrupted herself. "You 're thinkin' you might remark I don't have no call to talk 'cause I heerd you talkin' just now without you knowin'----"

"Madam----" began Apache Kid, in a courteous voice, but she would not permit him to speak.

"I was coming along in my stocking soles, in case the lad was sleeping," and she plucked up her dress to disclose her stockinged feet, "and I heerd by accident what you was talkin'. And I 'm going to tell you, Mr. Apache Kid, that you 're a deal better a man than you pretend."

It was, to me, an unlooked-for comment, for her manner was almost belligerent.

"You had it pumped into you, you says! O! An old woman like me understands men well. It's you sarcastic fellows, you would-be sarcastic fellows, that have the kind, good hearts. And you talk that way to kind of protect them."

I saw Apache Kid knitting his brows; but, as for me, I do not know enough of human nature to profess to understand all that this wise woman spoke.

"Take you care, Apache Kid," she said, and shook her finger at him, and even on her finger, as I noticed, there were freckles, and on the back of her hand. "Take you care that you don't get to delude yourself into hardness, same as you delude men into thinking you a dangerous sort o' fellow--a kind of enigma man."

"I am afraid I don't follow you," said Apache Kid.

"But you do follow me," she said. "All you want to do is to let yourself go--let that bit of yourself go and have its way--that bit that you always make the other half of you sit and jeer at!"

She paused, and then shaking her finger again remarked solemnly:

"Or you 'll maybe find that the good, likeable half o' you ain't a half no longer, only a quarter, dwindled down to a quarter, and the half of you that puts up this bluff in the face of men becomes three-quarter then. I 'm thinking I would n't like you so good then, Apache Kid! Not but what I 'd be----" she hesitated, "sorry for you like," she said.

"To win your sorrow, Mrs. Laughlin," said he, looking on her solemnly, "would be a desirable thing."

She gazed at him a long while, and to my utter astonishment, for I did not quite understand all this, there were tears in her eyes when she said, as to herself, "Yes, you mean that."

She sighed, and then said she: "What you need is to settle down with a good, square, honest girl. If I was younger like myself----" she broke off merrily.

Apache Kid looked her in the face with interested eyes.

"I wish I knew just what you were like, just how you spoke and acted when you were--in the position you have suggested as desirable."

"Would you have had me?" she said.

"I would perhaps have failed to know you possessed all these qualities you do, for you would never have shown them to me."

"Would I not?" said she. "Well, I show myself now; and if you object to young girls not showing their real selves, you begin and set 'em the example. You go down to the Half-Way House and show that Miss Pinkerton your real self, and----"

"Mrs. Laughlin!" he said. "I would not have expected this----"

"Why!" she cried, "I'm old enough to be your grandmother. Well, well! I see the lad is all right; that's what I came up for, so I 'll get away down again."

"Laughlin has certainly a jewel of a wife," said Apache Kid, after she departed, and that was all on the matter.

Miss Pinkerton herself was not mentioned again by either of us, and the other subject of our talk we settled two days later, when I, having "got to my legs" again on the day following that chat, accompanied Apache Kid to the jail where the sheriff unlocked the safe for us and gave us our property, which he had in keeping.

The horse, I heard then, had been returned to the livery stable from which Canlan had hired it.

All that the sheriff had to say on the matter of our property was to the effect that though two of the Lost Cabin owners had been often enough known to say that they had no living relative, the other--Jackson--was supposed to have a sister living.

"If you want to do the square thing," said he, "you ought to advertise for her."

Apache turned to me.

"I forgot that," said he; "I forgot to tell you," and he drew a newspaper from his pocket. "Don't you get the 'Tribune,' Sheriff!"

He opened the paper and pointed to his announcement for relatives of J. E. Jackson.

"I have put it in this local rag," said he, "and a similar one in a dozen leading papers over the States, and in three of the smaller papers in his own State. I heard he was an Ohio man."

The sheriff held out his hand.

"I once reckoned," said he, "that we 'd be ornamenting a telegraph pole in Baker City with you, but now I reckon we will see you sheriff of Carson City, sure."

Apache Kid took the proffered hand and shook it; but he showed me deeper into himself again when he said in a dry voice:

"I don't think, Sheriff, that there will be any real need for you to congratulate me any oftener than you have done already, on finding out further mistakes you have made in your attempts to discover my real character."

And so saying we went out; and as I shook the sheriff's hand I noticed that he took mine absently. I think he was pondering what my friend had said.

"One grows weary of patronage," said Apache Kid to me as we plodded along the deserted streets to the bank.

"Deserted streets?" you say. Yes, deserted. For an "excitement" had sprung up at Tremont during my ten days in bed. As we passed the hotels on our way to the bank, the hotels that had always been thronged and full of voices, the doors always on the swing, we saw now on the verandah of each of them one solitary man, with chair tilted back and feet in the rail. These were the worthy proprietors, each figuring on the chances of Baker City booming again, each wondering if he should follow the rush.