Part 4

"Well, I want to thank you. I bin keepin' my eyes open for you since that night. I want to thank you for that service you done me. Any time you want a----" but I did not catch his last words. The driver had mounted the box, gathered up the "ribbons," sprung back the brake, and with a sudden leap forward we were off in a whirl of dust. I nodded my head vigorously to Canlan, glad enough to see that he was only anxious to be friendly and to thank me for the service I had rendered him instead of embarrassing me with questions as to my destination.

Away we went along Baker Street and shot out of the town, and there, just at the turning of the road, was Apache Kid by the roadside, and he stood aside to let the horses pass. The driver looked over his shoulder to make sure that he got on safely, but there was no need to stop the horses, for with a quick snatch Apache Kid leapt aboard and sat down, hot, and breathing a little short, beside me.

*CHAPTER VII*

_*The Man with the Red Head*_

Of two incidents that befell on the journey to Camp Kettle, I must tell you; of the first because it showed me Apache Kid's bravery and calm; and that the first of these two noteworthy incidents befell at the "Rest Hotel" where we had "twenty minutes for supper" while the monster head-lamps were lit for the night journey; for between Baker City and Camp Kettle there was one "all-night division," as it was called.

Apache Kid, after getting into the stage, sat silent for a much longer time than it took him to regain his wind. The high speed of travel with which we started was not kept up all the way, needless to say, such bursts being spectacular affairs for departures and arrivals. But with our six horses we nevertheless made good travel.

Occasional trivialities of talk were exchanged between the travellers--there were three others besides ourselves--and Apache Kid gave no indication by his manner that he and I were in any way specially connected. It was amusing indeed how he acted the part of one making friendly advances to me as though to a mere fellow-voyager, including me in his comments on the road, the weather, the coyotes that stood watching us passing with bared teeth and ugly grin. Later, when one of the others fell asleep and the remaining two struck up a conversation, he remarked:

"Well, that was a hot run I had. Whenever I turned the far corner of Baker Street I took to my heels, doubled back behind the block, and sprinted the whole length of the town. I had to tell another lie, however, for I saw Canlan in Baker Street, just when I was thinking of getting aboard the stage. The driver was in having a drink before starting and, so as to prevent him raising questions about my blanket-roll lying in the stage and me not being there, I told him I had forgotten something at this end of the town and that I would run along and get the business done, and he could pick me up in passing. Lucky he did n't come out then or he would have wondered at the direction I took. You had n't turned up, you see, and I knew I must let you know that it was all right."

He paused and added: "But from to-day, no more lying. I don't want when I come into this kingdom of mine to feel that I've got it at the expense of a hundred cowardly prevarications."

He sat considering a little while.

"If Canlan should by any chance get wind of our departure and follow up----" he began, and then closed his teeth sharply.

"What then?" I asked.

"He 'd be a dead man," said he, "and a good riddance to the world."

"I 'd think murder worse than lying," said I.

"Tut, tut!" said he. "You look at this from a prejudiced standpoint. Donoghue and I are going out to a certain goal. We 've arranged to win something for ourselves. Well, we 're not going to win it with humbugging and lying. Where speech would spoil--we 'll be silent; otherwise we 're going to walk up like men and claim what's coming to us, to use the phrase of the country. Heavens! When I think of what I 've seen, and been, and done, and then think of all this crawling way of going about anything--it makes me tired, to use the----" and he muttered the rest as though by force of habit but knowing it quite unnecessary to say.

There was nothing startling on our journey till the incident befell which I promised to tell you. It was when we came to the Rest House, a two-storey frame house, with a planking built up in front of it two storeys higher, with windows painted thereon in black on a white background, making it look, from the road, like a four-storey building.

When we dismounted there one of the men on the coach said to the proprietor, who had come out to the door: "What's the colour of your hash slinger? Still got that Chink?"

"I 've still got the Chinaman waiter, sir," replied the proprietor, in a loud, determined voice, "and if you don't like to have him serve you--well you can----"

"I intend to," said the man, a big, red-faced, perspiring fellow with bloodshot eyes. "I intend to. I 'll do the other thing, as you were about to say;" and he remained seated in the coach, turning his broad back on the owner of the Rest Hotel.

"I won't eat here, either," said Apache Kid to me, "not so much from desiring in Rome to do as the Romans do, as because I likewise object to the Chink, as he is called. You see, he works for what not even a white woman of the most saving kind could live upon. But there is such a peculiarly fine cocktail to be had in this place that I cannot deny myself it. Come," and we passed wide around the heels of four restive cow ponies that were hitched at the door, with lariats on their saddle-pommels and Winchester rifles in the side-buckets.

"Some cowboys in here," said Apache Kid, "up from Ney's place likely, after strayed stock," and he led the way to the bar, and seemed rather aggrieved for a moment that I drew the line at cocktails.

When we entered the bar-room I noticed a man who turned to look at us remain gazing, not looking away as did the others. Instead, he bored Apache Kid with a pair of very keen grey eyes.

Apache evidently was known to the barman, who chatted to him easily while concocting the drink of which I had heard such a good account, and both seemed oblivious to the other occupants of the room. A flutter of air made me look round to the door again. Apache Kid had said no word of Donoghue, but I remembered Donoghue's remark as to seeing me later, in a day or two, and half expected him to appear here. But the door was not opening to a newcomer. Instead, the man who had cast so keen a look on my friend was going out, and as he went he glanced backwards toward Apache Kid again.

I stepped up to Apache Kid and said: "I don't like the manner of that man who went out just now. I'm sure he means mischief of some kind. He gave you a mighty queer look."

"What was he like?" Apache asked, and I described him, but apparently without waking any memory or recognition in Apache's mind.

"Who was that who went out?" he asked, turning to the barman.

"Did n't observe, sir," was the reply.

"O! Thought I knew his----" Apache Kid began, and then said suddenly, as though annoyed at himself: "No, I 'm damned if I did--did n't think anything of the kind. Did n't even see him."

The barman smiled, and as Apache Kid moved along the counter away from us to scrutinise an announcement posted on the wall, said quietly: "He don't look as if he hed bin drinkin' too much. Strange how it affects different men; some in the face, some in the legs. Some keep quite fresh looking, but when they talk they just talk no manner of sense at all."

I could have explained what was "wrong" with Apache Kid, but it was not necessary. Instead, I stepped back and took my seat with what the barman called, with a slight sneer, my "soft drink."

Apache Kid turned about and leant upon the counter. He sipped his cocktail with evident relish, and suddenly the door flew open. Those in the room were astonished, for the newcomer had in his grasp one of those heavy revolvers,--a Colt,--and he was three paces into the room and had his weapon levelled on Apache Kid before we had recovered from our surprise.

"Well!" he cried, "I have you now!" and behind him in the doorway, the door being slightly ajar, I caught a glimpse of the man who had gone out so surreptitiously a few moments before.

Apache Kid's eyes were bright, but there seemed no fear on his face; I could see none.

"You have me now," he said quietly.

The man behind the gun, a tall fellow with close-cropped red hair, lowered his revolver hand.

"I 've waited a while for this," he said.

"Yes," said Apache Kid. "To me it is incomprehensible that a man's memory should serve so long; but you have the drop on me." Here came a smile on his lips, and I had a suspicion that it was a forced smile; but to smile at all in such a pass I thought wonderful. "You have the drop on me, Jake,--in the language of the country."

The man Jake lowered his hand wholly then.

"You can come away with that old gag of yourn about the language o' the country, and you right up against it like this? No, Apache Kid, I can't--say!" he broke off, "are you heeled?"

And I thought to myself: "In the language of the country that means, 'are you armed?'"

"I am not," said Apache, lightly.

The red-headed man--he looked like a cattleman, for he wore skin leggings over his trousers and spurs to his high-heeled boots--sent his revolver down with a jerk into the holster at his hip.

"I can't do it," he said. "You 're too gritty a man for me to put out that way."

There was a quick jingle of his spurs, and he was gone.

A long sigh filled the room.

"A gritty man, right enough," said one man near by. "A pair of gritty men, I 'm thinking."

Apache Kid drained his glass, and I heard him say to the barman:

"Well, he 's no coward. A coward would have shot whenever he stepped in at the door, and given me no chance. And even if he had n't done that," he continued, arguing the thing aloud, in a way I had already recognised as natural to him, as though he must scrutinise and diagnose everything, "even if he had made up his mind to let me off, he would have backed out behind his gun for fear of me. No, he 's not a coward."

"But you told him you were n't heeled," said the barman.

"Oh! But I might have been lying," said Apache Kid, and frowned.

"He was n't lying, I bet," said the man near me. "A cool man like that there don't lie. It's beneath him to lie."

But Apache Kid did not seem to relish the gaze of the room, and turned his back on it and on me, leaning his elbows on the bar again and engaging in talk with the barman, who stood more erect now, I thought, and held his head higher, with the air of a man receiving some high honour.

And just then, "All aboard!" we heard the stage-driver intone at the door.

When we came forth again there were only two horses before the hotel.

"The red-headed man and his friend are gone," thought I, as I climbed to my place, and away we lumbered through the night, the great headlights throwing their radiance forward on the road in overlapping cones that sped before us, the darkness chasing us up behind.

*CHAPTER VIII*

_*What Befell at the Half-Way House*_

Of the second incident that befell on the journey to Camp Kettle I must tell you because it had a far-reaching effect and a good deal more to do with our expedition than could possibly have been foretold at the time.

Of the incident at the Rest House, which I have just narrated, Apache Kid said nothing, and as curiosity is not one of my failings (many others though I have), to question I never dreamt; and besides, in the West, even the inquisitive learn to listen without inquiring, and he evidently had no intention of explaining. But when, at last, after a very long silence during which our three fellow-travellers looked at him in the dusk of the coach (whose only light was that reflected from the lamp-lit road) with interest, and admiration, I believe, he said in a low voice which I alone could hear, owing to the creaking and screaming of the battered vehicle: "I think you and I had better be strangers; only fellow-travellers thrown together by chance, not fellow-plotters journeying together with design."

"I understand," said I, and this resolution we accordingly carried out.

After a night and a day's journey, with only short stops for watering and "snatch meals," we were hungry and sleepily happy and tired when we came to the "Half-Way-to-Kettle Hotel" standing up white-painted and sun-blistered in the midst of the sand and sage-brush; and I, for my part, paid little heed to the hangers-on who watched our arrival, several of whom stretched hands simultaneously for the honour of catching the reins which the driver flung aside in his long-practised, aggressive manner--a manner without which he had seemed something less than a real stage-driver.

I noticed that Apache Kid had taken his belt and revolver from his blanket-roll and now, indeed, was "heeled" for all men to see, for it was a heavy Colt he used.

Indoors were tables set, in a room at one side of the entrance, with clean, white table-cloths and a young woman waiting to attend our wants after we had washed the dust of the way from our faces and hands and brushed the grit from our clothes with a horse brush which hung in the cool though narrow hall-way.

Apache Kid sat at one table, I at another, two of our fellow-voyagers at a third. The remaining traveller announced to the bearded proprietor who stood at the door, in tones of something very like pride, that he wanted no supper except half a pound of cheese, a bottle of pickles, and a medium bottle of whisky.

This request, to my surprise, was received without the slightest show of astonishment; indeed, it seemed to mark the speaker out for something of a great man in the eyes of the proprietor who, with a "Very good, sir--step into the bar-room, sir," ushered the red-eyed man into the chamber to right, a dim-lit place in which I caught the sheen of glasses with their pale reflection in the dark-stained tables on which they stood.

In the dining-room I found my eyes following the movements of the young woman who attended there. A broad-shouldered lass she was, and the first thing about her that caught me, that made me look upon her with something of contentment after our dusty travel, was, I think, her clean freshness. She wore a white blouse, or, I believe, to name that article of apparel rightly, with the name she would have used, a "shirt-waist." It fitted close at her wrists which I noticed had a strong and gladsome curve. The dress she wore was of dark blue serge. She was what we men call "spick and span" and open-eyed and honest, with her exuberant hair tidily brushed back and lying in the nape of her neck softly, with a golden glint among the dark lustre of it as she passed the side window through which the golden evening sunlight streamed. I had been long enough in the country to be not at all astonished with the bearing, as of almost reverence, with which the men treated her, tagging a "miss" to the end of their every sentence. The stage-driver, too, for all he was so terrible and important a man, "missed" her and "if you pleased" her to the verge of comicality.

I think she herself had a sense of humour, for I caught a twinkle in her eye as she journeyed to and fro. That she did so without affectation spoke a deal for her power over her pride. A woman in such a place, I should imagine, must constantly find it advisable to remind herself that there are very few of the gentler sex in the land and a vast number of men, and tell herself that it is not her captivating ways alone that are responsible for the extreme of respect that is lavished upon her. She chatted to all easily and pleasantly, with a sparkle in her wide-set eyes.

"I think I remember of you on the way up to Baker City," she said: "about two months ago, wasn't it?"

And when I had informed her that it was even so she asked me how I had fared there. I told her I thought I might have fared better had I been in a ranching country.

"Can you ride?" she asked.

I told her no--at least, not in the sense of the word here. I could keep a seat on some horses, but the horses I had seen here were such as made me consider myself hardly a "rider" at all.

She thought it "great," she said, to get on horseback and gallop "to the horizon and back," as she put it.

"It makes you feel so free and glad all over."

I would soon learn, she said, but "the boys" would have their fun with me to start.

All this was a broken talk, between her attending on the tables; and as she kept up a conversation at each table as she visited it I could not help considering that her mind must be particularly alert. Perhaps it was these rides "to the horizon and back" that kept her mind so agile and her form and face so pure. It was when she was bringing me my last course, a dish of apricots, that a man with a rolling gait, heavy brows, and red, pluffy hands, a big, unwieldy man in a dark, dusty suit, came in and sat down at my table casting his arm over the back of the chair.

This fellow "my deared" her instead of following the fashion of the rest, and surveyed me, with his great head flung back and his bulgy eyes travelling over me in an insolent fashion. When she returned with his first order he put up his hand and chucked her under the chin, as it is called.

"Sir," said she, with a pucker in her brows, "I have told you before that I did n't like that:" and she turned away.

My vis-a-vis at that turned to his soup, first glancing at me and winking, and then bending over his plate he supped with great noise,--something more than "audible" this,--and perennial suckings of his moustache.

When the maid came again at his rather peremptory rattle on the plate, "Angry?" he asks, and then "Tuts! should n't be angry," and he made as though to embrace her waist, but she stepped back.

He turned to me, and, wagging his head toward her, remarked:

"She does n't cotton to me."

I make no reply, looking blankly in his face as though I would say: "I don't want anything to do with you"--just like that.

"Ho!" he said, and blew through his nose at me, thrusting out his wet moustache. "Are you deaf or saucy?"

I looked at him then alert, and rapped out sharply: "I had rather not speak to you at all, sir. But as to your remark, I am not astonished that the young lady does not cotton to you."

With the tail of my eye, as the phrase is, I knew that there was a turning of faces toward me then, and my lady drew herself more erect.

"Ho!" cried the bully. "Here's a fane how-de-do about nothing! You want to learn manners, young man. I reckon you have n't travelled much, else you would know that gentlemen setting down together at table are not supposed to be so mighty high-toned as to want nothin' to do with each other."

I heard him to an end, and, laying down my spoon, "With gentlemen--yes," I said, "there can be no objection to talk, even though your remark is an evasion of the matter at present. But seeing you have gone out of your way to blame my manners, I will make bold to say I don't like yours."

The girl stepped forward a pace and, "Sir, sir," she began to me and the bully was glaring on me and crying out, "Gentlemen! 'between gentlemen' you say, and what you insinuate with that?"

But I waved aside the girl and to him I began:

"I have been in this country some time, sir, and I may tell you that I find you at the top of one list in my mental notes. Up to to-night I have never seen a woman insulted in the West----" and then, as is a way I have and I suppose shall have a tendency to till the end of my days, though I ever strive to master it (and indeed find the periods between the loss of that mastery constantly lengthening), I suddenly "flared up."

To say more in a calm voice was beyond me and I cried out: "But I want no more talk from you, sir; understand that."

"Ho!" he began. "You----"

But I interrupted him with: "No more, sir; understand!"

And then in a tone which I dare say savoured very much as though I thought myself quite a little ruler of men, I said: "I have told you twice now not to say more to me. I only tell you once more."

"Good Lord!" he cried. "Do you think you can scare me?"

"That's the third time," said I, mastering the quaver of excitement in my voice, lest he should take it for a quaver of fear. "Next time I don't speak at all."

"Maybe neither do I," said he, and he lifted the water carafe as though to throw the contents on me, but he never did so; for I leant quickly across the table and with the flat of my hand slapped him soundly on the cheek, as I might have slapped a side of bacon, and, "That," said I, "is for insulting the lady."

It was "clear decks for action" then, for he flung back his chair and, spinning around the end of the table, aimed a blow at me; but I had scarce time to guard, so quick was he for all his size. I took the simplest guard of all--held my left arm out rigidly, the fist clenched, and when he lunged forward to deliver the blow I ducked my shoulder but kept my fist still firm.

It was a fierce blow that he aimed, but it slipped over my shoulder and then there was an unpleasant sound--a soft, sloppy sound--for his nose and my rigid fist had met. Then the blood came, quite a fountain. But this only heated him and he dealt another blow which I received with the "cross-guard," one of the best guards in the "straight on" system of boxing, a system generally belittled, but very useful to know.

I think he had never seen the guard in his life, there was so astonished a look on his face; but before he recovered I had him down with a jar on the floor so that the floor and windows rattled,--and his brains, too, I should imagine.

He sat up glaring but something dazed and shaken. God forgive me that I have so feeble a control of my passions once they are roused and such a horrible spirit of exultation! These have their punishment, of course, for a man who exults over such a deed, instead of leaving it to the onlookers to congratulate, falls in their estimation.

However, to give over moralising, I cried out, as he sat up there on the floor with the blood on his face and chin and trickling on his thick neck: "Come on! Sit up! If you lie malingering, I 'll kick you to your feet! I 'm only beginning on you."

I think the onlookers must have smiled to hear me, for, though so far I had got the better, the match was an absurd one. But my foe was a man of a bad spirit; without rising he flung his hand round to his hip.

I had a quick glimpse of the girl clasping her hands and heard the gasp of her breath and her voice: "Stop that now--none of that!"

But another voice, very complacent and with a mocking, boyish ring, broke in:

"Throw up your hands, you son of a dog!" And then I ceased to be the centre of interest and my brain cleared, for Apache Kid was sitting at his table, his chair pushed back a little way, his legs wide apart as he leant forward, his left hand on the left knee, his right forearm lying negligently on the right leg--and loosely in his hand was a revolver pointed at the gentleman on the floor.

The other two were looking on from under their brows, the stage-driver sitting beaming on the scene. The girl swung round on Apache with an infinite relief discernible in her face and gesture. The cook who had come from the rear of the room, having seen the business through the wicket window from his pantry, I suppose, cried out: "Make him take out his gun and hand it over, sir."