Part 8

Apache Kid frowned on him and, "I give you my word of honour," said he; and so we came ploughing through the loose soil and sand into the sun-dried grass, and thence on to the level below, where Mr. Pinkerton, now aided by his half-breed follower who had gone on down-hill and mounted his horse, was bunching the horses together. And over all was the sky with the daylight fading in it.

*CHAPTER XIII*

_*In Which Apache Kid Behaves in His Wonted Way*_

What with the pains upon my forehead, caused by the blow I had come by when my unfortunate horse put his foot in that unchancy burrow and sent me flying; what with that pain and the ache of my legs, and something else that was not a pain, but worse than a pain, I had scarcely the heart, I fear, to give Mr. Pinkerton as kindly a smile of welcome as he had in store for me on seeing me again alive.

That other thing I speak of as worse than a pain was a horrible nervousness with which my hour of torture with the snake had endowed me. Yes, it can only have lasted about an hour, I think, that hideous experience, though then it seemed an eternity. But so had it affected me that when we gathered together on the plateau I paid little heed to the council of my companions,--had lost interest in their affairs. Instead, I kept jerking my head into my shoulders, and caught myself even gasping suddenly and dodging a snake that leaped at me in the air,--a snake that, even as I sought to evade, I knew was not there at all,--a mere creature of my harassed and frayed nerves. Mere fancy I knew it to be, but still I must needs dodge it and blurt out a gasp of terror again and again.

It was while I was still busied on this absurd performance,--still standing in the talking group and heedless of the talking,--that I saw Apache Kid knitting his brows at me, and supposed it was in contempt; and that caused me to pull myself together and square myself, as a soldier may do under the eye of an officer. When I did so, I remember that I seemed to go to the other extreme; in my attempt to master this nervousness, I caught myself grinning.

It was then that Mr. Pinkerton, who was holding back a little way, looking on, but not party to our doings, remarked to me, as he caught my eye again:

"I took a long shot at that horse of yours, sir, and put it out of its agony when it got its leg broke; but things have been levelling up since then, and I think men and horses are just on a par again--one horse, one man."

I laughed hilariously at this saying, as though it were something hugely amusing. But between you and me, I do not think that Mr. Pinkerton spoke it from his own kind heart but spoke thus more as some sensitive men wear a cloak of pride or shyness or a false bombast to protect them from other men less finely tuned. It was, I believe, only to show a hard front before these new partners of ours, as villainous a trio as you ever clapped eyes on, that he spoke in this light way of the doings of death; because at my laugh I saw him frown as though he regretted that I could enjoy his bitter jest so fully.

In a dazed way I saw the party mounting; but so great difficulty had I in gaining the saddle of a horse--whose horse I do not know; I think it was the mount of the man called Cockeye--that Donoghue came to my side and held the stirrup and gave me a "leg up" and, "Are you scared, or what?" he said in my ear, low and angry and with something of contempt. "You 've made a hash of to-day for us as it is, with goin' and gettin' that accident. Are you scared o' them fellers?"

"Scared!" said I. "Man! I 've been tortured."

"Been what?" said he, and he got on to that vicious mount of his with such a viciousness himself, in his pull of the rein and lunge of his spurs, that I saw Mr. Pinkerton give him a look as who should say: "He's a devil of a man, that."

But Donoghue crowded his beast to my side and asked me what I meant by my remark of being tortured, and I told him the whole matter of it as we rode across the plateau, all lit now with the thin last glow of day.

He listened with his head to one side and his loose jaw tightening and thrusting out.

"I take back what I said to you," said he. "I take it back right now; and as for hindering our journey--why that could n't be helped. Better that we met these fellows right here, face to face, instead of goin' on unknowing and getting shot by 'em round the fire to-morrow night or plugged through the windows of the Lost Cabin three nights hence."

This might have given me an idea of how far we had still to go--or rather should I say, in a country such as this, of vast distance, of how nigh we already were to our journey's end, had I been much heeding that evening.

He held out his hand to me across his saddle (I was riding on his left), and as we shook hands I saw the man Pete look at us with a doubtful eye.

And for a surety there was every reason why these fellows should be suspicious of us and be wary and watchful of our movements.

That they were three unscrupulous scoundrels--"The toughest greazers that ever stole stock," as Mr. Pinkerton had phrased it when speaking of them and their cronies (using the word "greazer" in its loose, slang sense, not necessarily implying thereby that they were actually Mexicans, which is the meaning of the name)--that they were capable of any treachery and cruelty themselves, there was no doubt. And as they were, so they would be very prone to judge others and were, doubtless, already thinking to themselves that we three had after all--for the present at least--the best of the bargain; for had they set upon us and done away with us, where would have been their chance of coming to the Lost Cabin? As far away as ever; the Lost Cabin would still have been a needle in a haystack.

On the other hand, I guessed them already arguing, we would be glad and even eager to kill them, though they desired to keep us alive--for a time.

I suppose they took our handshake--Larry's and mine--for a sign of some understanding between us and scented in it a treacherous design upon them, for they kept upon our flanks hereafter, at sight of which Donoghue laughed his ugly laugh and shook his horse forward a step, sneering at them over his shoulder.

O! We were a fine company to go into camp together, as we did within half an hour, before the last grasshoppers had ceased their chirring, on the side of the knoll where was a spring of water, a little pool overhung by a rock with strange amphibious insects darting away from its centre to the sheltering banks as we dipped our cans for water to make the flapjacks.

To any chance observers, happening into our camp at twilight, we would have seemed nothing more dire than a round-up camp of cow-boys, I fancy, for after the meal, when pipes and cigarettes were lit and belts let out a hole or two and boots slackened, there was an air of out-door peace around the fire.

Yet I need not tell you that the peace was on the surface--fanciful, unreal. As for me, the snake was leaping in my eyes out of the fire, when Apache Kid, as calm as you please, struck up a song.

Heads jerked up and eyes glanced on him at the first stave. It seemed as though everything that any man there could do or say was to be studied for an underlying and furtive motive.

It was "The Spanish Cavalier" he sang, with a very fine feeling, too, softly and richly. There is a deal of the sentimentalist about me, and the air, apart from the words, was ringing in my heart like a regret.

"The bright, sunny day," he sang, "it soon fades away," and after he ceased the plain had fallen silent. The chirring of insects had gone and left the valley empty of sound. During all the journey I never heard so much as the twitter of any bird (except one of which you shall hear later), so I think that the gripping silence at the end of day must have been due only to the stopping of the insect life. By day one was not aware of any sound; but at the close of day, when the air chilled, the silence was suddenly manifest.

Sure enough, the bright, sunny day was fading and in the silence, when the voice of the singer ceased, I must needs be away back in the homeland, counting the hours in my mind, reckoning them up and judging of what might probably be afoot in the homeland then--and there is something laughable in the thought now, but I counted the difference in time the wrong way about and sat sentimentalising to myself that my mother perhaps was just gone out to walk in the Botanic Gardens, and picturing my little sister prattling by her side with her short white stockings slipping down on her brown legs, and looking back, dragging from my mother's hand, to watch the blue-coated policeman at the corner twirling his whistle around his finger. Had I not been so wearied and worn, I would not have made this error in the reckoning. As likely as not my mother was then waking out of her first sleep, and thinking, as women do, of my material and spiritual welfare, all at the one time; perhaps wondering if my socks were properly darned and putting up a loving prayer for my welfare.

Then the singing ceased, and the cry that I now knew well, the dusk cry of the coyotes, rose in a howl, with three or four yelps in the middle of it and the doleful melancholy baying at the close.

I looked round the group at the fire again.

"Well," said Apache Kid, the first to speak, "who's to night-herd the horses?"

The man Dan rose up at that. It was he who alone of all my tormentors on the cliff had spoken a word with anything of kindness in it.

"I 'll take the first guard, if you like," said he.

Farrell looked across at Apache Kid.

"One of your side, then," said he, "can take the next guard--share and share--time about, I guess; eh?"

Apache Kid threw the end of his cigarette into the fire and, drawing out his pouch, rolled another and moistened it before he replied.

"Why do you talk about sides at all?" he asked. "I thought we were a joint stock company now?"

"Well, well," snapped Farrell, "I mean one of you three--you or one of your partners."

"Quite so; I know what you mean. I understand your meaning perfectly."

There was a pause and then said he, taking a brand from the fire and lighting his cigarette, so that I saw his full, healthy eye shine bright: "If you are going to talk about sides in this expedition--then so be it. But I don't think our side, as you call it, will bother with any night-herding; indeed, I think we need hardly trouble about saddling up or unpacking or cooking or anything--if you make it a matter of sides." And he blew a feather of smoke. "I think my side will live like gentlemen between now and the arrival at the Lost Cabin Mine."

Every eye was fixed anxiously on him.

"You see," he explained, "the fact is, you need us and we don't need you. It's a case of supply and demand and--seeing you talk of sides," he said, with what must have been, to Farrell, an aggravating insistence, "our side at present is wanted. It's almost a sort of example of the workings of capital and labour. No!" he ended, with a satisfied grunt, "I don't think there's any need for me to tend horses at all, thanks. I 'm quite comfy by the fire."

There was a shrewd, calculating look on Farrell's face as he looked Apache Kid cunningly in the eye a space. I could wager that he was making himself certain from this speech that Apache Kid was the principal in our expedition. I think he really believed that I could say nothing of the Lost Cabin, even had I desired to, and from the way he looked then to Donoghue and looked back again to Apache Kid it struck me forcibly that he was wondering if it were possible that Larry Donoghue was not "in the know" to the full, but merely of the company in a similar way with myself.

Then he rolled an eye back again to Apache Kid, and I remembered the sheriff of Baker City then, for Farrell's words were the very words I had heard the sheriff use: "You 're a deep man," he said.

"And I 'm quite comfy, too," broke in Donoghue. "Thanks," he added. "And as for this young man beside me, I think he wants a rest to-night. A man that's had a snake wriggling at his nose for half of an afternoon is liable to want a little sleep and forgetting."

Everybody cocked an ear, so to speak, on this speech; but no one of those who did not understand asked an explanation.

Farrell looked with meaning at Mr. Pinkerton, who sat out of the affair, but neither he nor the half-breed spoke a syllable, Pinkerton pulling on his corn-cob pipe, and the half-breed rubbing the silver buckle of his belt with the palm of his hand, and studying the reflection of fire-light in it.

"No, no," suddenly remarked Apache Kid, "you could n't ask Mr. Pinkerton to do that, nor Charlie either. We can't be so inhospitable as to ask our guests of this evening to night-tend our horses."

"What the hell are you getting on about?" said Farrell, and then, as though thinking better, and considering that a milder tone was more fitting, he said: "I never asked them to."

"No, no; you did not ask them to," said Apache, in a mock-conciliatory tone, and then, with a smile on his lips, he said gently: "But you were thinking that, and I--know--every--thought--that passes through your mind, Mr. Farrell."

You should have seen the man Pete at these soft-spoken words.

I must give you an idea of what this fellow looked like. To begin with, I think I may safely say he looked like a villain, but more of the wolf order of the villain than the panther; he had what you would call an ignorant face,--a heavy brow, high cheek-bones, very glassy and constantly wandering eyes, far too many teeth for his mouth, and they very large and animal like. And if ever I saw superstitious fear on a man's face, it was on the face of that cut-throat.

He looked at Apache Kid, who sat with his hat tilted back and his open, cheery, and devil-may-care face radiant to the leaping firelight,--looked at him so that the firelight made on his face shadows, instead of lighting it; for he held his chin low and the mouth open. His hat was off and only his forehead was lit up. The rest was what I say--loose shadows. Then he looked at Farrell, as though to see if Farrell were not at all fearful, and, "Say!" he said, "I 'll take 'herd' to-night."

Farrell turned on him with a leer and laughed.

"I guess you 'd better go first then," said he, "before midnight comes, and let Dan go second, after a three hours' tend. You 're the sort of man that is all very good robbing a train, but when you get in among the mountains with the boodle you get scared. And what for? For nothing! That's the worst of you Cat'licks."

So Farrell pronounced the word, and the man flung up his head at that with an angry and defiant air, so that one only saw there the bravo now, and not the ignorant and superstitious savage. He was on the point of speech, but Apache Kid said:

"Sir, sir! it is very rude, to say the least of it, to malign any gentleman's religion. I presume from your remark that you are of the Protestant persuasion, but my own personal opinion is that you are both equally certain of winning into hell. If our Roman Catholic friend is kind enough to offer to relieve us of the monotony of night-herding duty, we can only thank him."

So Pete rose and tightened his belt, and went his ways; and that in no less than time, for the horses were already restive, as though the loneliness of the place had taken possession of them. Of all beasts I know, I think horses the most influenced by their environment.

"Well, if this don't beat cock-fightin'!" I heard Mr. Pinkerton's voice behind me, where he lay now, leaning on an elbow; and then he said a word or two to the half-breed, who rose and departed out of the circle of the fire-shine.

In a little space he returned, leading his own mount and Pinkerton's by the lariats which were around their necks, and as he made fast these lariats to a stone Farrell looked at Mr. Pinkerton across the glow, and asked him, suspicious as ever, "What's that for?"

"Oh! Just so as not to be indebted to you," replied Pinkerton, and coming closer to the fire he rolled his one grey blanket round him and, knocking out the ashes of his pipe, lay down to rest, the half-breed following suit. But after they had lain down, and when I, a little later, at a word from Donoghue, suggesting I should "turn in," unpacked my blankets, which I had found among the pile of our mixed belongings, I saw the half-breed's eyes still open and with no sign of sleep in them. "So," said I to myself, "Pinkerton and the half-breed, I expect, have arranged to share watch and watch, without having the appearance of doing so."

And indeed one could scarcely wonder at any such protective arrangement in such a camp as this. Donoghue and Apache Kid, indeed, were the only two there who could close their eyes in sleep that night with anything like a reasonable belief that the chances of their awakening to life again were greater than their chances of never breathing again the sage-scented air of morning.

*CHAPTER XIV*

_*Apache Kid Prophesies*_

You may wonder how it was possible for me to lie down, to roll myself round in my blankets, to fall asleep in such a camp, in such company as that. I, indeed, wondered at myself as I did so, wondered how I came by the heedlessness, for I cannot call it courage, that allowed me to compose myself to slumber. Anything might have happened in the dark hours, murder and sudden death; but I was excessively fatigued; my body ached; my nerves too were unstrung by the torture of the cliff. Sleep I must and sleep I did, on the instant that I stretched myself and laid down my head. Perhaps the sigh with which I dismissed from my mind the anxieties that might have kept me wakeful was more of a prayer than a sigh.

Across the fire of smaller branches that had cooked our supper, in the preparing of which each took part, a great log was laid, so that no replenishing would be necessary.

It was the sound of Donoghue's voice that woke me to blue night, starshine, and the red glow of the log. His position was unaltered. I could have believed that he had not moved a muscle since my lying down, and the stars told me I had slept some time. He reclined with his legs crossed, his feet stretched to the glow, his hands in his coat pockets, and his unloosened blanket-roll serving for a cushion to the small of his back.

"There ain't no call for me to turn in," he was saying. "I don't have to turn in to please you."

I snuggled the blankets under my chin and looked to see who he was addressing.

All the others of the company were lying down, but it was evidently Farrell who had made the prior remark, for he now worried with his shoulders in his blankets to cast them from him, and rising on an elbow, said: "O, no! You don't have to. But it looks to me mighty like as if you was scared of us--that you don't lay down and sleep. We 're square enough with you."

Donoghue looked at him in that insolent fashion of opening the eyes wide, and then almost shutting them, and sneered:

"Well, well, what are you always opening your eyes up a little ways and peepin' at one for? One would think you was scared o' me; and that feller there, that Dan, or what you call him, he keeps waking up and giving a squint around, too. You 're square with us? We 're square with you, ain't we?"

Farrell flung the blankets back from him and cried out: "Do you know what I'm goin' to tell you? I would n't trust you, not an inch. I got my gun here ready, if you try any nonsense."

The gleam of an unholy satisfaction was on Donoghue's face then, and he cried out: "Well, sir, if I find a man trust me, I 'm square with him; but if he don't trust me, I don't play fair with him. That's right, I guess, ain't it?"

This, to my mind, was a very faulty morality, but it seemed not so to Farrell.

"Yes," he agreed. "I reckon that's generally understood," and then he showed quite a turn for argument on his own plane of thought.

"But you don't trust me, neither," said he, "and if I was payin' you back the way you talk about, I 'd up and plug you through the head."

Argument was not in Donoghue's line but he cried out:

"And where would I be while you were tryin' it on?"

Farrell did not answer, and in the pause Donoghue did indeed continue the argument, unwittingly, to its logical conclusion:

"No, no, my boy," he said, "you would n't plug me here. You would n't plug me till we got you what you wanted. O! I know your kind well. You thought you held the trumps when you corralled the lad there," and he jerked his head in my direction, "But you did n't."

"It seems to me like as we did," said Farrell, with a vindictive leer, "else why are we here now?"

"Here now?" snapped Donoghue. "Why, you're here because my partner is so durned soft, times. He would n't--go--on--and leave the lad," he drawled contemptuously. "What good was the boy to you, anyhow?" he asked. "Looks as if you knew you were trying it on with a soft, queer fellow. I 'd ha' let you eat the boy if you wanted and jest taken a note o' your ugly blue mug in my mind and said to myself: 'Larry, my boy, when you see that feller ag'in after you 've got through with this Lost Cabin Mine--you shoot him on sight!'"

"And what if the mug was to follow you up?" said Farrell.

All this while there was no movement round the fire, only that I saw Apache Kid's hand drawing down the blankets from his face. Pinkerton and the half-breed were a little beyond Donoghue and lying somewhat back so that I did not know whether or not they were awakened by this talk. And just then Dan sat up suddenly, glared out upon the plain to the four points of the compass, and screamed out:

"The hosses! Where's the hosses?"

We were all bolt upright then, like jumping-jacks, and leaning on our palms and twisting about staring out strained into the moon-pallid plain.

Dan leapt to his feet.

"The hosses is gone!" he cried, and he rushed across to the two horses that were tied with the lariats.

"Lend me a hoss," he cried. "We must go out and see where Pete has got to with them horses."

"I lend you dis--you sumracadog!" said the half-breed in his guttural voice and he flung up his polished revolver in Dan's face.

It was Apache Kid who restored some semblance of order to the camp.

"All right, Dan," he said. "Don't worry. It's too late now."

We all turned to him in wonder.

"Pete thought it advisable to take the whole bunch away. He agreed that it was advisable to make what little capital he could out of his expedition into this part of the country. On the whole, I think he was sensible. Yes--sensible is the word," he said, thoughtfully wagging his head to the fire and then looking up and beaming on us all.

"What you mean?" cried Farrell.

"Just what I say," said Apache Kid. "He simply walked the whole bunch quietly away five minutes after he bunched them together out there."

"You saw him doin' that! You saw his game and said nothing!" cried Farrell.

"Even so!" replied Apache Kid.

Farrell glared before him speechless.

"What in creation made him do that?" said Dan, going back like a man dazed to his former place.

"You mean _who_ in creation made him do that?" Apache Kid said lightly: "and I have to acknowledge that it was I."

"You!" thundered Farrell. "I did n't see you say a word to him. You bought him off some ways, did you? How did you do it?"

"O!" said Apache Kid. "I simply gave him a hint of the terrors in store for him if he remained here. You heard me; and he was a man who could understand a hint such as I gave. I took him first, as being easiest. But I have no doubt that you two also will think better of your intention and depart--before it is too late. He went first. You, Mr. Farrell, I think, will have the honour of going last."