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Title: Hands Up!
Author: Niven, Frederick John (1878-1944)
Date of first publication: 1913
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: John Lane, 1913 (first U.S. edition)
Date first posted: 5 February 2010
Date last updated: 5 February 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #474

This ebook was produced by:
David T. Jones, woodie4
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

This file was produced from images generously made available
by the Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries




  HANDS UP!


  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  THE LOST CABIN-MINE

  THE ISLAND PROVIDENCE

  A WILDERNESS OF MONKEYS

  ABOVE YOUR HEADS

  DEAD MEN'S BELLS

  MY LADY PORCELAIN




  HANDS UP!


  BY

  FREDERICK NIVEN


  NEW YORK

  THE JOHN LANE COMPANY

  MCMXIII




  CONTENTS

    CHAP.                                     PAGE

       I WHY I WENT WEST                         7

      II AT BLACK KETTLE                        25

     III THE COWBOY PHILOSOPHER                 45

      IV NEWS FROM HOME                         56

       V GOVERNMENT BONDS                       68

      VI DIAMOND K                              76

     VII APACHE IS SENTENCED                    85

    VIII AT THE HOLLOW TREE                    105

      IX ALIAS BILL                            124

       X APACHE TALKS                          135

      XI BUCK JOHNSON                          144

     XII JAKE'S WIFE                           157

    XIII TWO TROOPERS                          167

     XIV COW-SENSE                             179

      XV AG'IN THE GOVERNMENT                  193

     XVI OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT             199

    XVII ANOTHER CONVERT                       212

   XVIII THE RETURN OF APACHE                  219

     XIX THE HURDY-GURDY                       225

      XX BUCK RETURNS                          229

     XXI SET A THIEF--                         240

    XXII AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL               249

   XXIII A DEPUTY SHERIFF HITS THE TRAIL       265

    XXIV ROOM THIRTEEN                         279

     XXV PETE DISCOURSES                       289

    XXVI THE OUTLAW BULL                       303

   XXVII AT THE PUEBLO WALL                    308

  XXVIII EPILOGUE                              316




CHAPTER I

WHY I WENT WEST


There has been a good deal of talk, one way or another, about the Apache
Kid. The Yellow Press made capital out of him just as they have made
capital out of many another figure on the frontier--Texas Jack, Wild
Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane.

Now, I knew the Apache Kid. I was mixed up in the last wild days of his
life, and, while not seeking to white-wash him, I should like to
tell--to all whom it may concern--my view of that extraordinary man.

It is common knowledge that he was liked. Not only cowboys and miners
who knew him, but your moneyed person, your capitalist even, can find a
sigh for Apache Kid, the hold-up man. I have known two men, prominent,
respected, one "interested in mines," the other a great ranch-owner and
dabbler in booms, both of whom had met Apache in their travels about the
West. Both spoke of him with regret, with much more of a shake of the
head over his misguided, or rudderless life, and his wild end, than with
the "jolly good riddance" air that might be expected. There was reason
for it.

I had better, to begin with, explain how I came to the sage-brush
country of the Apache Kid, because, in a new country, the men one meets
there have had some concussion (good or bad) in their lives to boast
them so far. And the reason for their being in the new country is a
kind of striking of the pitch-fork to get their key.

That beginning of things I must tell quite frankly, bolstering myself up
to the explanation by the thought that most young men--boys, let me
say--for I was but a boy (and though I say "most young men" I am talking
of myself!) have a kind of what the Scots call "daftness" in them, and
are generally exceedingly sorry for themselves, magnificent in their
woes and grandiloquent in their hopes.

I had wanted, in the old country, to be a sheep-farmer. My mother had,
however, coaxed me to go in for a scholarship at my school. We spent our
summer holidays, I remember, that year, after I had sat for the
examination, in the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, an island that
appeals to the youngster because of its moors, its cliffs and corries,
its high rocks and adders in the heather.

All through that vacation I was out and about on the hills with the
shepherd and working in the dips. My father would come and watch me
clutch adroitly a sheep by the horns, swing my leg over it and straddle
it to the tank, plunge it in, walk alongside, yank it up at the end, and
send it down to the pen among the other baptised ones. I say this not
sacrilegiously now, but recalling an unfortunate expression used at the
time.

My mother (bless her) was of the old school, and had had hopes that I
might become a minister of the gospel, which several boyish escapades
had dashed. My father and she had little in common; and one day, as he
watched us working in the dips, my mother came along, under her
sunshade, from the farm and stood looking on, half-sad, half-proud. My
father was wholly proud of me at the moment, because I had pinioned a
particular recalcitrant ram between my knees, and, wriggle his head as
he would, I was his master. The farm-boys stopped to laugh and egg me
on--just as I have seen, since then, cowboys roar with laughter when
some branded two-year-old (who slipped through unbranded at one-year)
has arisen and made a disturbance in a corral.

My father turned about, and, seeing my mother, gave his sniff that
prefaced a jocular remark and said he:

"I think you'd better be glad that the boy can baptise sheep instead of
mortals."

My mother stiffened under the sunshade, held it up rigidly over her head
instead of letting it make a pretty circle behind her head and
shoulders. She walked sadly back to the farm and wrote a letter
straightway to her minister, asking him his views on sheep-farming for a
young man. The parson wrote back that sheep-farming was a lazy life.

My father was a queer old fellow. He was a determined enough man, but
very "jack easy" as the word is. He would dismiss things with a
"Pshaw--don't worry me," just when the looker-on expected him to fight
to the end for his own view, would give his shoulders a dismissing
shrug and retire to the library to read his "Don Quixote" in Spanish,
with his feet on the mantelpiece.

When this letter arrived my mother handed it to him and he read it with
eyes widening and widening, held it in a trembling hand and bellowed
out:

"What has he got to do with it? Perfect nonsense! What a woman! What a
woman! He's a shepherd of souls that--that--that--_parson_! What does he
know about mutton?"

And then my dad seemed to listen to the echo of his voice and, alas, saw
the humour of his remark. He sat back and laughed at himself, then got
up, flicked the letter, said: "Far better give the boy a chance. I wish
my father had let me follow my instincts--" and retired to smoke many
cigars and read "Don Quixote" in the Spanish.

But evidently he could not settle. I think, looking back on him, that he
tried too much to dismiss things instead of to mend them. He had,
nevertheless, quite an ordeal of it dismissing that letter. It came on a
Friday and all Saturday he was glum and on Sunday so glum that he spent
the forenoon yarning with the stable-boy and the ploughman. To my great
delight, from where I sat (glum as he, before the farmhouse) I saw him
dancing and snapping his fingers, explaining some Spanish dance to the
farm hands. They looked upon this townsman, spending his summer vacation
with them, as a "great card." He had spent his younger days partly in
Chili, in the nitrate business, partly in the Argentine, and lived a
deal in the past. He was now giving them an exhibition of some Spanish
dance; and presently he began to sing, in response to some request from
the stable-boy, a Spanish song.

My mother came out and looked at him sadly. I was old enough to see both
sides--to see that, in one way, my dad was making a motley of himself
for these boys. But, at the same time, he was having what, out West, we
would call "a good time." He was enjoying his summer vacation.

The trouble was that it was Sunday; and my mother thought he had been
better employed singing a psalm to the boys--and he knew that she
thought that, when, looking across the stableyard, he caught her eyes.
Result: he sniffed twice, blew his nose loudly and retired quite inside
the stable where the boys followed--and sang, a little more quietly,
another Spanish song a little more extravagant. Also my mother wept just
two tears, and no more, and retired to the garden seat with the New
Testament.

That Sunday was to me a long, long day, for on the Monday I expected to
have news of the scholarship and I hoped, most ardently, that I had not
won. But Monday was a long day too--because news did not come.

I know nothing in life worse than waiting. To act is good; to rest is
good; to loaf is good. But to wait, to wait is horrible, undermining,
breaking-down.

The post box, for the old country, was, in the Isle of Arran, very
primitive. We might have been in the last ranch of the West so far as
the post box went--for it was merely an old mustard box covered with
zinc on which the Highland rain played tip-tap between blinks of sun, an
old mustard box on top of a stake driven into a bank at the roadside,
just where the cart track to the farm debouched from the fine road that
runs round the island.

My father walked down with me on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, walked down
eager and impatient. He had his own mail to expect, of course, but I
know he was eager about that letter for me.

Even on Wednesday it did not come. He had, however, a large mail of his
own and among it some newspapers. He slipped his letters into his inside
pocket to read afterwards and, with his walking-stick under his left
arm, opened a newspaper, held it wide, scanned the pages, frowned under
his hanging brows, puffed his moustache, pouted, and bent his head. I
thought some speculation had gone agee; but no--he handed me the paper
and pointed.

The newspapers had received the list of prize-winners before the letter
announcing my place had come to me. Yes--I had won a scholarship. My
name looked out on me, in hard print, from among the twenty under the
heading, "Result of the ---- ---- School Bursary Examination."

My father said not a word--just tapped my shoulder twice lightly with
his walking-stick, then put it back under his arm, folded his hands
behind his back, and walked up hill looking at the pieces of Macadamised
rock glittering in the road.

"You see," said he at length, after a long pause, "your mother had hoped
that Jack would go in for some profession at home."

Jack was my elder brother, and he had gone to the Panama Canal first of
all, then left the canal to embark in the rubber business in Guatemala,
then left that and gone to Venezuela where he was now, according to his
letters, managing a horse ranch. Spanish was a language my mother looked
upon with regret; for Spanish had carried my brother to all these
places.

"Well," said I to my father, "I would rather be in Jack's place than in
a university."

Up we trudged a few yards more and my father merely sniffed.

"Yes," he said at last, "yes, I quite understand. Well--well--you may
learn engineering eventually. And engineering needs education. And
engineering can take a man to the ends of the earth if he wants to go."

Of course I jumped at that idea--anywhere, anywhere out of the world of
crowds!

Up we came to the farm and my father handed over the mail that had come
for my mother.

"Has Will had no letter?" asked my mother, as she took the bundle.

My father smiled and shook his head. Then he prepared to give her a
surprise with the newspaper, sniff-sniffing and glancing at it to get
his finger on the place to spring it on her. She liked what she called
"pleasant surprises," and he liked to surprise her pleasantly.

She opened a certain letter first, curious, womanlike, because she did
not know the handwriting.

"I don't know this writing," she said, turning it over and over.

"Well, bless my heart, my dear, why not open it?" said my father. "Eh?
What?" and sniffed, and got his finger to the list of Bursary winners.

My mother opened the letter, and one in her handwriting dropped out. She
let it fall, looking puzzled, and there it lay--for her strained face
held our gaze. She read the letter, let it fall, sat down on the seat
before the door and stared into vacancy. My father cried out:

"What? What? What? Not that! Not that! Not that!"

He had an intuitive sense, or quickness of perception, of the kind
called Celtic. He lifted the letter and read it. But he had little need
to do so. He had known, looking on my mother, that it was to tell of the
death of my elder brother; and his jaw went tight. Slowly, stiffly, his
head rose and he looked up at the sky and, in a voice I shall never
forget, he said:

"Oh, God! And he was a man! He was a man! I shall never forgive
you--God!"

"Oh, John! John! Come to me!" cried my mother. "John!" (my father's
name) "take care John!"

But my father was walking to and fro in the yard at a quick step as if
on a quarter-deck. He walked to the gate that led to the road down hill;
he walked to the gate that led to the moors; to and fro, to and fro.

The people who owned the farm-steading came to peep and look. In a near
field the farmer stood, rake upheld, transfixed, watching that march.
From the door of the farm the old mother peeped. At the stable door
there were faces. It was terrible. My father walked to and fro with his
jaws locked and grim and his hands clenched. My mother ran after him
clutching his shoulder and saying:

"John! John! Let your wife console you."

He turned once or twice in his walk and looked at her, but with no
expression save a kind of puzzled one, as if he thought: "Who is this?
Why does she hang on my steps?"

Once I thought he was going to strike her and leapt forward to
intercept; but it was only a gesture of dismissing her that he had made;
and as I leapt forward he looked at me, and his eyes were so
blank--looking at me as if I were a stock or stone--that I gave a
choking blub in my chest.

Suddenly my father cried out:

"And he was a man, Oh, God! He was a man!" and raised his fist to the
heaven--and fell down in the yard.

It is too painful for me to tell the rest; but the end of my father was
that he was led away from that farm where we had come on summer
vacation, taken away like a little child, led by the hand of a man who
had come from Renshaw Asylum for him.

Having gone in for the scholarship, and won it, I now continued my
studies, still in Glasgow. Home was very subdued and sad. A great gloom
hung over it in which my poor mother moved like a withered leaf. I
noticed, when I accompanied her to church--which I always did now, never
inventing excuses for staying at home as had been my wont of old--that a
new petition had come into the parson's prayer: ". . . and for those
whose minds have been blinded we pray for light."

I think if I had looked into my heart during these months I should have
been by way of flattering myself that I was an ideal son. Indeed, I
think at times I did so look and see myself upon the stage of life as
something of a heroic figure. Youth is histrionic.

Sheep-farming was over; in another month I would be sitting for a fresh
examination; If I came out near the top a Bursary would be mine again,
carrying me on from the grammar school to our university; if I came out
a little lower I would have at least a scholarship. I was already looked
upon by my class-mates as distinctly in the running; and yet a
university career was the last thing that my heart desired.

When I passed Westward by Kelvinside and saw the towers of the
university against the sunset they interested me well enough to carry
the vision of them home in my mind so that I might make an impression of
them in red chalk. From the exterior there was something airy, romantic,
about these towers. After seeing them one evening, as I walked home,
many raucous voices of a Salvation Army Choir fell harshly on my ears,
the discords of cornet and tambourine, with the words, "Far, far away,
like bells at sunset pealing," and I wanted to take the choristers up to
the end of Charing Cross and ask them to look on these towers as they
dissolved in the mists of night--so that they might understand something
of the beauty of the words they sang.

When I passed down University Gardens late one night from visiting a
friend there, sudden, over me, there was a boom; the half-hour had
sounded. And I stood stock still in that broad, deserted thoroughfare,
and listened to the waves of sound trembling into distance. That
experience made me think of a meteoric stone fallen in the velvet purple
of some lake and sending a circle of waves to the surrounding shores. As
the words of the singers conjured up the misted towers, fading out so
beautifully as to make me annoyed at their insulting discords, so the
boom of the bell conjured up a picture. The art of words is not my
forte; but I consider, thinking thus, how all the arts are one. To all
this I have been led by speaking of the exterior of the University of
Glasgow.

As for the interior it had for me no attraction, and yet I was about to
sit in an examination in a grand endeavour to achieve that for which I
had no desire. So I saw myself, if not a "greenery yallery, oh such a
good young man" as--in the phrase of old women--a "good son." Yes--there
is no doubt that youth is histrionic.

You will readily understand that a young man of such calibre as this had
his calf-love; and if the lady smiled, at times, a little on the
sardonic side, I do not know that the young man was any the worse. He is
the last, at the time, to perceive the sardonic dimples at the edges of
his idol's mouth. He will see to it that she remains for him the Holy
Grail, the Light that never was on land or sea. She has her amusement,
he his ideal; and I think these things are well.

I think women like things to be a little secretive; an apple, if it be
but a crab apple, is preferable to the luscious pear. Really, I do not
think, looking back on that idyll from the sanity of middle age, that
the secrecy of our meetings was essential; but I do know, whatever the
cause, My Lady, with very solemn eyes, suggested to me the advisability
of not calling too frequently at her home. I remember that, at the time,
I used to marvel much how Fate cast us together, how frequently we, as
it were bumped into one another, and I used to take it as a sign that
Fate smiled upon us.

But, looking back now, I remember that when I bumped into her--let me
say at Queen Street Station--at two of a Saturday afternoon, she really
had dropped, in conversation the preceding Monday, that she expected to
be in town on Saturday afternoon. When I had made up my mind to visit
the Institute of Fine Arts upon a Thursday evening, changed my mind and
decided to go upon Friday, I think it quite probable that I really
remembered the fact--before the changing of my mind and not after--the
fact that she had said that she intended to go to see the pictures at
the Fine Arts Institute on Friday evening because the band played on
that night.

On so much of my calf-love, then, do I look back with smiling tolerance;
no--I think I should say with approval, for he who worships a Goddess in
spirit and in truth is not likely to slide too often from his chair
beneath the table, at a smoking concert, and, though no puritan, I have
observed that a Spartan menu is conducive to a healthy body, and a
healthy body is the fit home for a healthy mind.

A celebrated Scot has said that the Scotsman without religion is apt to
drop into the public-house; an irreligious young man, I would add, with
no blasphemy, but a knowledge of mankind and romantic views, can make
out of a West End young lady with bowed lips and russet locks, a
Divinity as effectual as a stone Virgin between wax candles. Still, your
Divinity must have her whims, and not all her whims can shatter her in
the eyes of her worshipper. I really don't think that the secrecy was
good, but that is a detail. As luck would have it (I remember how, in
the agony of the time, I thought some hideous Fate stepped in upon our
family ever) as luck would have it, out of my romance came tragedy.

Thrice I had conveyed My Lady to her door and, by her request, parted
from her behind some trees that overlooked her father's house. I suspect
there was nothing more in it than the chaffing of her brothers;
certainly they used to cock an eye in a roguish way upon me at times,
and I fancy indeed that we were looked upon as something of a joke. My
Lady would have it, at any rate, that I remain in the shadow of the
rhododendrons until she had rung and till the flood of light upon the
gravel had announced the opening of the door, its extinguishment the
closing. I was to count ten--or something of that kind--and then depart.

This kind of parody of Romeo I can quite understand is titillating to a
young lady who owns a ticket of the Circulating Library, but there are
many types of minds in the world and while some deck the sinister with
the romantic, others see in the romantic the sinister. One such had
spied upon me; and on the third, or perhaps fourth occasion of this
secretive departure, just as I was turning away, he laid hold of me--a
perfect type of dirty-scarved, greasy-capped lurcher.

"Half a minute young man," said he. "I've been watching you."

"Well?" said I.

"What's it worth?" said he.

"What do you mean?" said I.

"Why," said he, "your little game. I'll keep my mouth shut for a quid."

My dander was by no means up; there was a trifle of almost amusement in
my mind.

"If you don't give me a quid," he said, "I'll step right over and tell
the gentleman that you've been trying to get round about his daughter."

Of course, as the saying is, I saw red at that and hit out; and there we
fell to, he, with his hooligan methods to aid in the victory, I with the
intense madness at the sullying of my idol. I write with a certain air
of levity of these incidents. I do so because there is no other way.
When I think of the sequel of it all it seems a very silly play.

At last I landed him a blow that not only laid him flat upon the ground,
but kept him there.

I was blown, my heart going like a piston, the sweat was cold on me
suddenly in the autumn night. I looked at my antagonist again. The
horrible, pallid light of an arc lamp at the corner sifted through the
hanging boughs of a lime-tree and glistened on his teeth. My heart, that
had been going like a piston, seemed to clutch, and clutch, and clutch;
an immense panic fell on me. I bent down and felt his heart and could
find no beating.

I remember the torture of the moment, how I was maddened with annoyance
at myself because all I could feel was the throb, throbbing of the
blood in my own hand. I almost wept. I put my ear to his breast and what
I heard was like the echo of my own heart-throbs in my ear. I could hear
nothing outside of my terror.

I stood up and said to myself over and over again, "Be calm! Be calm--be
calm!" I pressed my lips together; I went over the alphabet, all in a
mad endeavour to collect myself. So I gained some measure of calm, at
least enough to hold his wrist again, not with my thumb--remembering
that there is a pulse in the thumb; but there was no pulse of life in
his wrist.

You can conceive my panic. No time now for histrionics. As quick as a
knife-thrust I saw the gallows, my mother's agony--her death with a
broken heart--already nigh enough broken by the tragedy of my father's
madness. I walked home. I wanted to run home but I controlled myself. I
walked home.

My mother had gone to bed. I sat all night in my room. It is a wonder I
did not go grey as I have heard men may in a night. Time after time I
was possessed of a desire to go out and run, run, run. Where? I would
ask myself. And there I sat all night reasoning myself into a course of
wise action. Wise action! It was the biggest blunder I ever made in my
life.

I appeared at breakfast. My mother remarked upon my haggard looks. I
made some excuse--I know not what--of neuralgia, of neuralgic pain, of a
chill. I have had some moments of suspense in my life. I have had some
times of anguish. But they concern myself only, or those who are not my
blood kin. I wanted to tell her all; and anon I dared not. I wanted to
bid her farewell--and could not. I made my morning's farewell over-cold
instead of over-tender--I left the house, I made haste to my bank and
drew my little all, and thence to a shipping office.

I saw a clerk who cannot, I suspect, have been a youth of much
penetration; for, though I schooled myself, I can hardly think that my
face was free of signs of anxiety. I told him some airy tale of wishing
to get the first possible boat for America. There was one in a
fortnight. When I said, in as nonchalant a voice as I could muster:
"Oh--that is some time, and my business demands haste," with a "Just a
moment" he withdrew to the side of an elderly man at a rearward desk, an
elderly man who had that air as of being ready to jump into the breach
at a moment's notice, which I, observing, took for a sign that his
suspicion was aroused.

Nothing of the sort of course; he was only eager to book a passage. He
came over to me at once and echoing the "Just a moment" of the younger
assistant, departed into a partitioned off room at the end of the
office. Through the dulled glass I saw him take a receiver from the
rests of a telephone. I made a turn on my heel to run from the door,
sure that he was ringing up Duke Street, and then I gripped myself. I
was going to see it through.

He returned (after about a hundred years) to tell me that that evening I
could sail from Liverpool; there was just one berth, second class, if
that would suit.

There is no pummelling worse than that of a guilty conscience. I leave
it to the reader to imagine, upon these lines, the pummelling of the
ensuing days and these last, and horrific, pummellings on the coming
alongside of the Doctor's launch, on the coming alongside of the pilot
boat, on the coming aboard of the Customs men; on the descent of the
gangway.

That, then, is how I left home.




CHAPTER II

AT BLACK KETTLE


I find that others have felt, as I first felt on going West, "there is
nothing here but the railway." The feeling is, of course, absurd. But it
is very comprehensible. For mile after mile there is nothing to be seen
but the wilderness. The sage-brush lands, after the East is past, roll
everlastingly North and South.

I sat looking out at them, and instead of feeling more lonely and
miserable, felt more at peace. For these spaces asked me as it were to
live up to them, to put something in myself that they possessed. So,
instead of the sage-brush lands depressing me, they made me adopt this
outlook. I did not wish to weep for tangles and misunderstandings in the
little isle back there across the Atlantic. The accepting mood was
stronger. Very good; if that be Fate, let me bear it. It was only the
mountains that depressed me.

As the train entered these caons of the West where there seems hardly
room for aught but the rivers that foam through them, though engineers
have found a way, I felt again the fatuity of much of life. Restrictions
and constrictions seemed a great part of life; also misunderstandings.

The train screamed on through the mountains; hummed, on a hollow note,
across trestles; roared through caons; and I was glad when we emerged
at last, mounting upward, at Black Kettle which I had selected, looking
on the great map in the railway booking-hall back East, because its name
appealed to me, in the centre of a string of appealing names, thus:
Placer, Antelope Spring, Adobe, Black Kettle, Lone Tree, Fort Lincoln,
Montezuma. But by the time that we reached Black Kettle I had quite
decided that there was nothing for me to do in that country but to help
to keep the railway in repair!

Take Black Kettle for example. It consisted of seven houses: one hotel,
one store, one boarding-house, four residential houses with their
vegetable patches. The inhabitants were: the hotel proprietor, the
store-keeper, the store-keeper's wife, the barman, the Chinese cook,
four section men (including the section boss), a telegraph operator (who
was also station agent).

Everybody was very decent to me when I went in. The hotel proprietor
offered me a free drink before I had booked a room; the telegraph
operator (a thin, wiry little Scotsman with a thin, wiry moustache,
stained with tobacco juice) introduced himself to me when, after a wash,
I came out again and walked on the deserted balcony, introduced himself
and begged me to come and drink with him all in one breath. The
store-keeper, when I stepped over past his door and caught his eye, gave
me a nod and said "How-do" abruptly, but friendly enough; he looked an
abrupt man, a philosophic dry old stick, very like pictures of Uncle
Sam. The section men, when they came over to the hotel in the evening,
stood near me as if to give me a chance to talk, if I wished to; and,
when I did not speak, as I had read that in the West attempts at making
acquaintance quickly are sometimes resented, their boss said: "Perhaps
the gentleman setting there would care for a game?"

I turned my head.

"Good evening, sir," he said. "Kind of lonesome for a stranger in this
town. Would you care for a game of chequers?"

And so I played a game of draughts with the boss on the first evening in
Black Kettle. He was a Michigan man, all bones and joints and
elasticity, with a great foot for a double shuffle, a nose like a
door-knocker, chunks of cheek-bones, a thin, determined bony chin, and
glittering eyes.

I have spoken of getting used to the strange surroundings. The
surroundings were--across the railway track--green and silver benches
(because of their grass and sand) going up, up, up, in rolls, as if they
were for giants to sit on and watch some play going on in Black Kettle.
These benches fascinated me. The immense sweep of them, and the way
white clouds would look up away beyond the last one, and not as if just
behind the last, as if, rather, there was immensity between them and
that last roll of hill, charmed me. To lie on the verandah of the Palace
Hotel of Black Kettle and watch the clouds go up behind the benches, all
to the sound of grasshoppers chirping, seemed all that one could do in
Black Kettle. If one had not to work to live, I think it all that one
would desire to do also. I am no hobo, but I love to lie on the Palace
verandah and listen to the silence.

So do all men who visit Black Kettle. And to see a cow-puncher with his
back to the wall and his legs stretched half across the verandah there,
while his horse waits for him with drooping head, almost too
lazy-looking to flick the flies, is to see a picture not easily
forgotten.

But, as luck would have it, no cow-puncher was there to suggest, when I
arrived, by his presence, that there were homes and work back from the
track. Black Kettle was all alone with its handful of people for three
weeks. The sitting-room of the Palace, inhabited by a dull suite of
furniture, the bar-room inhabited by stolid casks, a few small tables
and chairs empty beside them, and a white-faced nickel-in-the-slot
hurdy-gurdy, and a large spittoon, plunged me in terror. The barman
sometimes woke in that desolation. The proprietor sometimes coughed in
the kitchen. Ah Sing sometimes sang, among his pots, in a high, thin,
plaintive voice. I made up my mind that there was no room for another
barman, even had I cared for the job or been considered capable. I also
made up my mind that there was no scope for another hotel, even if I had
the money to start one.

So, as the third week drew near an end, sick of doing nothing but
worrying on the verandah, I approached the section gang boss and asked
him if he knew of any work to be had in the vicinity.

He looked at me sidewise.

"What kind of job?" he asked. "Anything to do for the time being?"

"Anything at all," I said.

"Well, there's an extra gang coming to work up there--seven miles up the
line. I reckon I could say a word for you to the boss. He'll be coming
up with some men on the passenger train to-night."

The train was not due for an hour; but the inhabitants were already
arranging themselves in picturesque, open-shirted attitudes, on the
platform. By "inhabitants" I mean the three section men, hands in
pockets: one standing, leaning against the wall of the little station
house, one sitting, leaning against it and nursing one knee, the other
leg thrust out; one sitting on a truck; the telegraph operator inside
his room with his shoulder against the jamb, his hands in pockets, his
neck stretching out ever and again as he spat across the platform on to
the track.

When we appeared he spat and said: "How goes it?" and the section boss
replied: "Well, how are you making out?"

The three section men looked stolid; silence fell. Then the operator
spat again and said: "I was just telling the boys of when I was running
one of the stations in Columbia for a gold-mining company there;" and he
plunged into a story about yellow fever and how he kept the men all
working and how they dropped "like flies, gents; yes, sir, like flies,"
and all the while his instrument behind him was giving little jerky
"tick-tacks" as if some drowsy old woman napped over her knitting
within.

Then the booming whistle of the approaching train sounded, the track
began to sing. The engine shrieked, rounded the curve, and the
"passenger" ran into the dept with a whirl of dust and an odour of oil
and hot iron. The conductor and one man alighted. A tin box shot out of
one of the cars; the conductor called "All aboard!" and then, as the
train moved on again, he stood, holding out a hand to catch a rail, foot
slightly raised ready to step on when the end of a car would come level,
and--"How-do gents!" he hailed. "How's things up here? On the boom?"
laughed, stepped aboard, waved his hand; and the train slid out and we
sat looking at the tail-light dwindling--then looked at the man who
stood on the platform in the dusk.

I saw him loom big and heavy and withal easy despite his avoirdupois.
The section boss advanced on him, he on the section boss, and they
pump-handled each other cordially and stood chatting.

The operator said: "Oh, well!" and slipped in to his room and presently
a slab of light fell from his door across the platform, and the sound of
his instrument broke out. A little chill fell and the scent of
sage-brush blessed the night.

"Cold," said one of the section men, rose, and drifted away with slow,
heavy steps.

"Aye, aye!" said section man number two, and rose.

"Um!" said section man number three, and came erect from leaning against
the wall. They followed their mate.

"Come here, sir! I want to introduce you. I've been telling the
boss--this is Alf Douglas, boss of the extra gang coming up here; I
don't know your name, sir?"

"Eh--er--Williams," I said. Why "Williams" don't ask me. It was the
first that came to my mind, and so Williams I would be for the future,
at least till I had an English paper and had my mind relieved. "John
Williams," I said next. Why "John" don't ask me either.

"How do, sir?" said the boss. "Englishman?"

"How do you do?" I said. "No, I'm----"

"Oh--a Scotsman," he broke in. "That's better. Well, Mr. Dunnage, he
told me you want a job. You want it badly?"

"Yes," I said.

"Um!" he said, and shook his head. "The trouble is that I've got only a
gang of Dagoes to work for me and I never heard of a white man working
with Dagoes before. The money's all right, two and a half, just as if
they were white, but maybe you wouldn't care to tackle that--even
temporar'y till the white gang comes up?"

"There is a white gang?" I asked.

We were standing near the operator's door and the light showed
Douglas's face. I thought he gave a quick, keener look at me, as if
thinking I was none so eager for work after all; and we in the Old
Country are told to look eager in the States!

"In about a month," he said.

"Good," I said. "I can work in the Dago gang till then."

I saw that they both felt a little bad about it, then, as if they liked
me for taking the job on, but felt some remorse for having nothing
better to offer me. Still--I had to work and, as I have explained, being
green to the country, there seemed to me to be no other work in the
country but railroad work. The place looked, to my new eyes, wholly a
void--with the railroad running through it.

But things were not so bad as I had prepared to find them at the Gravel
Pit. Black Kettle lay seven miles away and to my imagination the place
was quite cut off from the world!

The passage of occasional freight-trains served but to emphasise the
loneliness of the country; for, after they had gone screaming past, even
before the dust swirls by the track side had settled, the silence came
again. Facing a great hill, a little west of the pit, a steam shovel had
been set. That steam shovel, in its own little siding, that steam
shovel, all covered with tarpaulins, seemed a melancholy sight. I could
hardly believe that white men would be coming anon to get steam up in it
and set it nosing and scooping into the hill. It wore the air of having
been left there for the Spirit of the Dry Belt to cover over with sand,
and blot out, and forget.

The camp consisted of two old freight-cars, one used for a store-house
and dining-room and kitchen and sleeping-room for a Chinaman; the other
used for a "bunk-house" for the men, with bunks fitted up inside it and
just the end partitioned off as a boss's room. In the boss's room were
two bunks, and one of them he told me I could occupy.

"I can't see a white man sleeping with these Dagoes," he said.

It was very good of him and I appreciated it very deeply. That was the
only difference made between me and the gang. I slept in the cut-off
apartment with the boss, but, at work, I was treated just as a unit of
the gang. When Douglas chose to be abusive he was abusive to us all; his
curses rang in my ears as sharply as in the ears of his "Eye-talians."

Our work was to undermine the hill along the railway track, with pick,
shovel and dynamite, preparing a path for the steam shovel. Here was new
work indeed for me; but what made it trying was the attitude of the
"Eye-talians." They resented my presence; and I went upon the principle
of ignoring their resentment. If a man working above me let a boulder
plunge down on me without any shout of warning, I slipped aside, as if
it was all in the day's work, never so much as looked up--and went on
working. I acted also upon the principle of showing, as well as no
resentment, a good example. If I was working above an Italian and
loosened a boulder I would shout: "Look out!" (or "Look up!" when I
found that "Look up!" takes the place of "Look out!" in the West). In a
way it was a mistake. These Italians seemed mostly of the order of
humanity that requests and begs to be brow-beaten. Douglas's wild
language, and the way he had of raising a clenched fist after a command,
accelerating the gang's movements, he had learnt, doubtless, just as I
was learning. I sometimes saw his eye on me after such episodes as I
tell of--when a boulder rolled towards me without warning and I merely
dodged--saw his eye on me, and at first wondered if he thought I was not
agile enough! Saw his eye on me when I shouted: "Look up!"--thoughtful,
watchful, considering. He seemed to say: "He'll learn!" That was what,
eventually, his glance seemed always to imply when he looked on such
scenes.

I did learn too.

At the end of the first week the boss called to me and one of the
Italians and told us to lift a log that lay by the railway track and
throw it down the further side of the embankment.

I stooped to lift one end; the Italian stooped to the other. I lifted
the log to my right shoulder; but the Italian, who was a left-handed
man, lifted by the left and eased his end on to his left shoulder. Thus
we were back to back; and when I started off in a slow step, never
thinking of left-handed men, I headed one way and he the other way.
Thus he fell backwards. I felt the jar, and looking round smartly, saw
him also looking round, off his balance. Instead of trying to hold the
log--though, just at that, he regained his balance, with legs spraddled
like a slack pair of compasses--he flung it from him. My shoulder and
collar-bone received a pretty jar, for I--still unlike the "Dago Push,"
as they were called by the Black Kettle section gang--was bent upon, as
I would say, being "decent," and was clutching the log to save the
Italian. Down went his end thud, and he called me what no man may call
another in earnest.

My blood boiled. I wanted, in one stammering speech, to explain to this
Dago what I thought of him--and his gang. I wanted to tell him that I
had tried to help him when I saw what he had done, to tell him that he
and his fellows deliberately rolled boulders upon me without warning,
that I always warned, that--every single item of the strained week.
Instead, at that oath, and seeing the Dago come for me, I simply saw
nothing but his ugly face and determined to pound it. I made three swift
steps to meet him. I had no intention to stand him off. If he thought he
could advance on me and I do the standing off he was all out of his
reckoning. I went to meet him mightily rejoicing.

He paused then and made a grab for a pinch-bar, snatched it up and
rushed afresh on me. There flashed into my head a yarn told by the
operator at Black Kettle that ended: "Fists are all very good, but in a
brown gang of any kind a white man is going to have no show with his
fists. If he ain't got a gun let him take the edge of a shovel." So,
when the whole gang dropped their tools and came plunging on me I
grabbed a shovel and rushed at them. I was glad they all came on me.
That one was not nearly enough. I could have knocked Italy off the map
of Europe at the moment!

They simply parted feebly at that, made abortive swipes at me and
circled wide. My man even dropped his pinch-bar, so I dropped the shovel
and smashed him with my fist. There was a thud of feet in the sand, a
bellow of oaths, and I was caught by the shoulders and sent flying.

"Come on! The lot of ye! Get a move on!" And Douglas, having flung me
from my enemy, shot past us to the gang, routing them back to work. I
stood up and looked on the scene. The "Eyetalian" rose with bleeding
nose and held out his hand.

"All right," he said. "We shake hand. Everyt'ing all right."

And he meant it--as you shall hear. I took his hand and we shook.

"Come on! Come on! Get a move on!" came Douglas's voice.

We went back to our log. The "Eyetalian" lifted by the right this time
and was very careful, when we had carried the log across the track, to
lower from the shoulder to the carry in unison with me, even said
"Ready?" waited for my "Right!" and then we flung the great log over.

He was then my very good friend and kept repeating, as we clambered up
to the gang: "All right. Everyt'ing all right. Ver' good."

But there was a man, Pietro, in the gang, for whom I had, as the West
says, "no use." And, as luck would have it, I was sent off in his
company to bring up a push-car load of cord-wood that had been thrown
from a train for the camp, but thrown off beside the steam-shovel, a
quarter of a mile away.

"Here Scotty--and you Pietro--you go down and get the push-car on the
track and fetch up a load of cord-wood from down at the steam-shovel."

Pietro gave me a malevolent look and Douglas, I noticed, smiled. We
placed the wheels on the rails and the push-car atop and trotted off
behind the car along the track. Just round the bend a grade begins and
the car required no pushing but, instead, had to be kept hold of by the
handles. A little further on was the trestle bridge, built, as you know
these bridges are, quite open, so that any one going over has to step
from tie to tie and can look clear down to the bottom of the gorge
below.

Suddenly, as we came near the bridge and were hidden from the gang by
the bend, Pietro said: "Why you not run?" and began to speed the car
toward the bridge. "Run! Can you no' run?"

"Take care at the bridge," I said.

"You scared!" he cried, and leant on the car and sent it fiercely before
him. I gave but one glance and then saw his game. He was getting ready
to leap to a sitting position on the car when we should gain the bridge.
I noticed his left shoulder (he running on my right) edging toward me.

What I expected happened.

Suddenly he leapt, intending to spin round and sit on the car, at the
same time intending to jolt me with his left shoulder. Just as he leapt
I dodged--with the result that he did not cannon off me on to the car,
but fell between me and it. I hung on to the car and yanked it to a
standstill and waited for him to rise. He scrambled to his feet,
muttering, with his eyes glinting on me.

"You missed it," I said.

"Yes, I miss," he said, and took hold again and we trotted on afresh.
Now came my turn.

"Run," said I and, full tilt, I started for the bridge which was just
about a score of ties distant.

I like nothing better than taking his own weapons to a man who is
determined to prove himself a menial person. He gripped tight to his
handle and fell into step. I put on every ounce of pressure I had in my
body. I stretched my body too, and my arms, so that I could see the ties
before coming to them, and thus not lose a step; for I knew that we were
almost on the bridge. Then we were on it! And I was glad that I had
stretched out so--for our speed was now so great that I could hardly
keep up with the push-car; and the ties, and the depth of the gulch
between them, made, together, just a blur below me.

"Run!" I cried.

He simply caught tight hold of the car and hung on. Suddenly he slipped.
But I was ready for that, to grasp him if he showed signs of falling
between the ties. No! He was too fond of life. He clung to the car, and
to life, so tenaciously that he made a drag on the car as, with his body
stretched out, his toes caught, caught, caught on the edges of the ties.
He had almost stopped the car by the time we gained the opposite bank.
There he scrambled to his feet. And now I had my eye on him.

"What you do?" he said.

"What you tried to do to me," I said, "and don't try again."

We trudged on thoughtfully to the cord-wood pile. He was silent; but, as
you can surmise, the air was full of trouble. It broke at the cord-wood
pile.

"You block that wheel to keep car from running down," he ordered.

At first I resented the order--you see by now what kind of kid I was and
will understand me doing so. I thought to tell him to do the blocking
himself, but quickly argued: "What's the sense? I don't want to dominate
him. I only want fair play;" so I blocked the wheel, with a billet of
wood from the side of the track, and as I rose from doing so, I saw a
shadow leapin' along the ground--gave a jump sidewise to keep whatever
caused it from falling on me, and smack came a billet down on the
car-end just where I had stood.

I had been far too patient with him. I should (as I expect you have
already thought) have made him block that wheel. However, he had got so
much rope that he was eager to hang himself.

"Oh!" he said. "I not see you--I begin to load car."

"If you are going to load the car like that," I said, "you'll have to do
it yourself," and I stood back.

"I not notice where you stand," said he.

I was pondering exactly what to do. Again I made a mistake. I did what
is called "leaving it at that"; I walked over to the cord-wood pile and
began loading the car. When I was at the car he would be at the
pile--when I was at the pile he was at the car. So we came and went.

Then, just as I was putting on what looked as if it would have to be the
last billet, he yelled: "Look up!" and flung a billet, from where he
stood, right to the top of the load, with the result that it all came
rattling down to both ends of the car. More intent on saving the work of
reloading than in attending to Pietro, I leapt to an end and thrust up
the pile there, balancing it. Pietro stood watching me, grinning. Then
he pointed to some billets that had rolled off at the other end.

"Lift these--too many!" he said.

That was enough. He had coaxed the fight out of me in earnest and I
lifted a billet as he ordered--but sent it bang at his head and followed
it up with myself. I had never learnt to box; but that which followed
was hardly a boxing contest. I assure you that before we were through I
was battered black and blue, and yet I felt not one single blow, knew no
pain until afterwards. All that I knew was that every now and then I got
a smash in at Pietro, keeping my eyes on his all the time.

The most terrible thing to remember is when I found myself on the top of
him, after he had fallen, and with my hands on his windpipe. It was his
eyes, protruding, that brought me to myself, horrified.

I cannot tell you the relief I felt when he lurched to his legs and
staggered to the car, kicked aside the billets that blocked the wheels
and began to strain against the car to set it in motion.

I walked over and leant to the task with him and so, both bleeding and
bruised, we urged the car back to camp. When we gained the other bank,
beyond the trestle, I stopped and held out my hand.

"All right?" I asked.

He looked at my hand. He half extended his. Then: "No!" he said and
swore in Italian.

"Oh, all right," I said, and we pushed on, rounded the bend, and came
back to where the gang worked on the gravel slope.

Douglas stood by the track-side; the gang toiled up on the hill-face.
As we passed Douglas I squinted up at him, where I bent pushing the
load, and he looked round hastily, was just going to look away
again--and then he saw our faces, wheeled about, looked at Pietro--at
me--back again--then chuckled to himself. That was all. But the incident
was not closed.

When we had unloaded beside the cook's car and lifted the push-car off
the wheels, and the wheels off the track, we returned to the gang and
clambered to our places on the hill. Immediately Pietro began to talk
wildly in Italian while using his pick. But he became so excited anon
that he ceased to wield the pick.

"Pietro, you so-and-so," came Douglas's voice. "I've got my eye on you."

Pietro cursed under his breath, but either wonderful is the carrying
capacity of atmosphere in the Dry Belt or else wonderfully accurate was
Douglas's knowledge of his man.

"Don't curse at me!" came Douglas's voice.

Pietro picked on, and quietly his mates discharged questions at him. As
I picked into the hill around a boulder I saw their eyes glinting
towards me.

Pietro began again; and one or two of the gang now grew so excited that
they ceased to work too. Douglas's voice bellowed, and they fell to work
again.

We were now confronted with rock.

"Is that rock?" hailed Douglas.

"Yes!" we shouted down.

"All right;" and he clambered up to us and the two men who did the
blasting as a rule fell to work making the holes for the charge.

I don't know how it befell--for Douglas generally erred on the safe side
and drew us off far further than seemed necessary when a blast was made;
indeed I have heard the men laugh at his care over them, and they have
looked at him so insolently when he ordered them to go well back, that
he has had (as the phrase is) to put the screw on extra tight
afterwards--I don't know how it befell, but this time he neither ordered
us off nor went off himself.

Always, I must say, he stood far nearer than he allowed any man to stand
when a charge was made. I grew to admire Douglas immensely, and I want
to note that fact about him. However, this time he seemed hardly
thinking about the detonation; stood just at the foot of the hill, and
we twenty yards along the grade.

"Boom!" and up went a cascade of dirt and rocks.

It was so vigorous that we raised our shovels and held them over our
heads to shield us from the falling shower of dirt and stones. Suddenly
we saw that Douglas had been hit. A chunk of rock had smashed his head.
I ran to him at once and bent over him. The gang followed.

"He hurt bad?" asked one.

"My God!" I cried. "Look!"

His head was gashed frightfully.

"He dead!" cried Pietro. "He dead!"

And then he gave a screech--there is no other word for it--and leapt on
me.

I slipped aside, but they seemed all to be upon me, these Dagoes; and
wildly I clutched a shovel and whirled round with my back to the hill.
And then that left-handed man, with whom I had had the altercation,
showed his genuineness. He gave a kind of scream.

"Ver' good. Everyt'ing all right. I stick to you!" and he snatched a
shovel and stood beside me and poured forth a cascade of voluble Italian
on the gang.

A showman in a cage of wild cats must feel somewhat as we felt then.
They rushed on me and I brought down the shovel on a pate, felt my legs
wobbly with fear and my heart big with determination all at one time;
swung the shovel round and smashed again, standing away from my one
friend so as not to hit him.

And then there came a whoop and a slither of stones, and the gang fell
back, and I too stepped back and gave a quick look up hill in the
direction of their gaze. And coming down the incline, with forefeet taut
in the sliding soil, hind legs bent, sliding down in the wonderful way
that they have the knack of, came a white Western pony, with a big,
broad-chested man upon its back, he balanced exquisitely like the God
Apollo to my eye.

But there was nothing of ancient Greece in his weapon. His left hand
lightly held the reins, his right was raised in air, holding a
long-nosed Colt, raised with the elbow toward us and the wrist backward,
ready to slam down forward, and aim, and fire, all in one quick
gesture.




CHAPTER III

THE COWBOY PHILOSOPHER


Within one minute the "Dago Push" was in full flight round the bend,
campwards. Within the hour, with Douglas unconscious across the saddle,
my splendid ally and I came into Black Kettle. The friendly Dago, we
suggested, should accompany us. But no--he said he would be all right
with the gang and so, as he spoke as one who knew, we did not urge him
to come with us. We came to Black Kettle, which clustered there,
oblivious of all things at the foot of the benches, in the sunlight and
sand. Looking round for sign of any inhabitants I saw, on this occasion,
what I had never noticed before: corrals to South of the track, in a
fold of the benches; and, standing in the centre of the little cluster
of houses, upright in the sand, a couple of hitching posts with rings in
their tops. Strange that I had not noticed them before. I suppose I had
been so possessed of my half panicky idea that there was nothing in the
country but the railroad that those two signs simply whispered to me in
vain--of ranches backward in the hills, and horsemen, sometimes at
least, riding into town from somewhere.

A hail brought Scotty, the lean, tobacco-juice-attenuated operator on to
the platform, rubbing his eyes from sleep and with dishevelled hair, the
ends of his sparse moustache, which he had a habit of chewing,
draggling in his mouth. He simply called out an oath (in a way common to
the place) at sight of our burden, and hastened, flurried and jerkily,
to our aid, helped us to carry Douglas into the dept office and lay him
on the floor there, and then he rushed to his instrument to call up a
doctor from Lone Tree. His tap-tapping over he turned to consider
Douglas, who now broke into pitiable moans.

"By----, Apache," said he. "It gives him a twist. I think I'd rather be
a stiff than like that."

"Oh, I don't know," said he who was called Apache, and raised and nodded
his head in a determined fashion. I noticed then, for the first time,
that he wore very little gold ear-rings. The light caught them as he
moved his head so. "I'm not so sure about that. Life is not worth living
for the man who can't get a move on things, for the man who is, as you
might say, waiting--for a man with a mine two hundred miles beyond
rail-head and he maybe sixty years old and the railway not liable to
extend for twenty years. He does not want a pompous funeral, and he is
not going to eat and drink his gravestone. Waiting is bad when there is
no show. If you are five hundred dollars in debt to the hotel-keeper and
your wages are only forty-five, it's bad waiting for that forty-five,
especially if you want to buy a new undershirt and a pair of pants. It
must be bad waiting in a cell for a hanging. But Life's worth living
when things are moving--Life's worth living for the prospector when the
track-layers are moving a mile a day nearer his prospective mine and
he's only tat fifty. If he was only twenty-one it would be futile, for
he'd be broke again long before he was forty. Life's worth living if you
owe your hotel-proprietor last month's grub and bed--thirty dollars--and
have a hundred dollars coming to you at end of the month. You'll be
liable to celebrate paying him off," he added, "and go broke again. It's
all right waiting even for the hangman in the condemned cell if you've
got a file up your sleeve. Yes, sir--and Alf Douglas is not so bad just
now as you might think. He's putting up a fight and you've wired for the
doc. Life is not a bed of roses--and only a man who thinks it is, is
going to go and say anything so damn futile. There's something to be
said for pain, too, my friend. Pain will teach you how to grip your jaws
together and I never heard that a cod-fished-mouthed man was much use.
Got any cigarettes?"

"No--don't smoke them," said Scotty. "I got a plug of chewing tobacco."

Apache shook his head. I took more stock of him now--this man who had
come so appropriately to my aid and to the aid of the boss. He was a
lithe, sunburnt fellow, wearing open a loose jacket, beneath which was a
black shirt with pearl buttons. Round his neck was a great
cream-coloured neckerchief that hung half down his back in a V shape. He
wore heavy leathern "chaps" (chaparreras). On his head was a round,
soft hat, broad of brim. He was a picturesque figure, one to look at
with interest, though he bore himself without swagger and apparently
made no attempt to attract attention.

He shook his head again.

"No use for an invalid," he said; "but Douglas is liable to want a smoke
after the doc's been along." He produced a bag of tobacco and cigarette
papers and squatted down cross-legged on the floor and began to roll. "I
can't stay on too long," said he. "I have an appointment."

Scotty looked out on the sunny square (I learnt afterwards that the
patch of sand was called a square) and said absently: "Far away?"

"Not very far away," said Apache. "See--I've rolled half a dozen and
pinched them firm. He's only got to lick them if he wants them. No, not
very far."

There was a long pause.

"You working with Johnson up at his new ranch, ain't you?"

"Yes."

"Kind of a gardening job for a man like you, ain't it?" This said a
little tentatively.

"Well, there are sure some implements to handle."

"They tell me he ain't got no stock at all on the place--that he's one
of these yere new gents that grows a rose tree in a dump of cinders."

"That's what they say," said Apache. "Maketh the desert to blossom with
the rose."

"That's what they say!" grunted Scotty, still staring out, his back
turned. "Don't you know yourself when you're aidin' him in his pursuits?
If it wasn't a man like you I'd say you were both locoed to try and grow
fruit up there."

"It's been done all right," said Apache. "I've seen these gardeners come
in where you'd think the only profession, bar cow-punching, would be
making lava ornaments--in a drier country than this--just a day's ride
more to hell, as they say--and--" he paused--"before three years were
past there were these gardeners coming down in waggons and telling the
cattle man that his day was done and--" he stopped short, aware of how
he was maligning what had been given out as his occupation. At the same
time Scotty turned slowly and surveyed him.

There they stood: the lean, little Scotsman with his brows frowning and
a grin breaking on his mouth, looking down on Apache Kid, making the
drollest distorted face imaginable; Apache Kid looking up at him, his
head a little on one side, his eyes dancing with merriment.

And then, in the chirring silence outside, we heard the rattle, rattle,
rattle of a pump-car abruptly break out and come smartly nearer.

I stepped out and there, just whirling round the bend, were four men on
a pump-car, two going up and two going down, two up and two down, with a
precipitancy that must have been something of a record.

A little later on in the day I was to see a pump-car driven as swiftly,
but I had never before seen such action. It thrilled me. There was
something magnificent in the rising and falling bodies, two forward, two
to rear, coming thus, rattling, on the jump, into quiet Black Kettle.
The first glimpse of the pump-car and the men suggested some
pre-historic beast, come awake in these sunny sand-hills after a sleep
of a million years, and cavorting down on the little dept. Up and down
went the bodies and then the pump-car rattled alongside the platform,
one of the men snapped "Whoa!" and all four clung to the handles that
had been going up and down for fourteen miles and stopped their motion.
But before the car stopped, one of the men (who had been pumping facing
the direction in which the car was urged) stooped carefully, to avoid a
hit on the head from the still rising and falling pump-handles, lifted a
little black bag and a jacket, and stepped neatly off to the platform.
He was pouring with sweat. His white shirt clung to him and showed a
solid, square little chest. In his mouth he held, daintily with his
teeth, a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses. This was "the Doc."

He saw me and said to me, setting down his bag with the jacket over it
and taking his eye-glasses from his mouth: "The Godam sweat blinds my
Godam eye-glasses," in quite a cultured voice. If Douglas had not given
a moan within at that moment I think I might have smiled. No wonder
that these better women who do not lecture us on swearing do sometimes
smile at us for the ridiculousness of our pet swears. I remember once
telling a dry stick of a man, very excitedly, about a storm, and saying:
"My mother tells me that she had a hell of a time in a storm off Cape
Horn." He looked at me with a dry twinkle and said: "Did the good lady
really say so?"

The Doc wiped his eye-glasses with a handkerchief and fitted them upon
his nose. He was a capable man I thought; for, as he was thus employed,
one of the men on the pump-car was lifting on to the platform buckets of
water which they had brought along with them. The Doc stepped into the
agent's room at the sound of Douglas's moan; and one of the men on the
pump-car, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, gave a little
chuckling laugh.

"Doc would make a heck of a section boss," said he.

"Reckon we never got over a track like it before," said another.

"I never did," said the one who was lifting off the buckets of water.
"He made me laugh, did Doc, when the sweat got running on his glasses
and he took them oft and then couldn't catch hold of the pump-handle
again."

"He got his knuckles rapped with the handle, I suppose," said I.

The man turned and examined me and evidently I bore his scrutiny well.

"No, sir," he said. "But we were going to slow up for him to catch
hold, and he yelled out to us to pump on. 'I'll catch the Godam thing!'
says he. He makes me smile--the English way he nips his cusses."

"He's all right," said another. "I see he knew his business when he
shouts out: 'The water-tank! Black Kettle ain't got water at the dept,
has it?' and when we all says 'No'--'Good,' he says, and we appropriates
all the five buckets in the freight shed, fills 'em full at the tank,
and sets 'em round our feet. It seemed a heck of a lot to bring five
full buckets--but it's five half ones now," and he nodded at the
half-empty pails.

Apache Kid came out to the platform abruptly, his sleeves rolled up,
very alert, snatched up one of the buckets and hastened back again to
the agent's room. It struck me that I could be of assistance and I
stepped quickly after him. One of the men who had helped to pump the
Doc, having dried his face and neck, followed me. We passed inside and I
saw Douglas propped up and the Doc bending over him, his black bag open
at his side, steel instruments glinting in it, Apache Kid kneeling
beside the Doc, mopping away with a sponge at Douglas's head. I saw the
Doc's hand come up with the gesture of one sewing with a short thread. I
had never been in a hospital. I had never seen an accident, and I felt
horribly sick. Suddenly the man who had come in with me, a great hulking
fellow, said "Oh!" and staggered from the room on to the platform and I
heard his boots give a foolish clatter, heard a grunt and, looking out,
saw him in a dead faint outside. Some quite stalwart men are like that.

"Some more water!" I heard the Doc's voice rasp and I leapt to a pail
and lifted it and carried it in.

"That'll do, you," said the Doc to Apache as I entered, and Apache rose
as I set the pail down. I felt better now, though I knew my face was
cold. Apache said: "He's all right now, Doc?"

"He's all right," said the Doc, and fell to sponging and cleaning his
hands in the bucket, staring at Douglas the while.

Apache looked at me and said: "Hullo, you look white."

"Queer," I muttered, "I felt sick at first."

"Yes," he said, "Even a man who can hold off a gang of Dagoes may feel
sick when he comes suddenly up against this side of life." He stretched
erect and said: "The only way to keep some sides of life from not making
you sick is to get right in and do something. He's all right, Doc?"

The Doc looked up and took stock of Apache, evidently more carefully.

"All right sir," he said. "We'll get him down to Lone Tree Hospital when
the train comes in."

"Then I'll get off to my appointment. So-long Doc. So-long Scot! So-long
Kid!" He trotted out. "Hullo!" I heard him say outside. "Feeling bad?
Yes I know. Yes--it does make you feel mean, doesn't it? Well, when a
man's built that way there's no mere looking on possible for him--he
must either step right in and be of use, or step right out--go get him
to a nunnery, so to speak. But there's nothing to be ashamed about, sir.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred can rubber-neck over the heads of a crowd
at a dog in a fit in the gutter and neither go away nor help. That's
humanity. You can get sick, sir, when you aren't helping anyhow.
So-long! So-long boys! Where's my bronco? Oh, there he is. Hi! Hi!
White-face!"

The doctor was drying his hands, half kneeling still at the bucket, half
sitting on his heels--a whimsical smile spreading on his face.

"Who is the cowboy philosopher?" he said as he put his towel in his bag
on top of his instruments and cotton wool, and snapped it shut. He saw
the cigarettes lying in the corner, stretched for one, wet it, and felt
for matches.

"They call him Apache Kid," said Scot. "A light, Doc?" and Scot tore off
a Chinese match from a block, lit it on his pants, and held it while the
sulphur burned.

The doc was looking at me, and Scotty said "Damn!" as his fingers were
burnt.

"You've been scrapping!" said the doc, and looked at my battered face,
touching it lightly. "Oh I don't think you need anything much. If you
like, a little arnica--three parts water, and bathe that jaw."

"This is nothing," I said.

"Nothing by comparison," he agreed and turned. Then he held his head
forward and lit the cigarette at Scotty's second match, and blew a
cloud. The aroma of the weed filled the place very pleasantly. It seemed
like vespers or a benediction. Douglas stirred, opened his eyes. He
muttered something.

"Yes?" said the doctor and knelt to him.

"Give me a draw," said Douglas.

Past the window, in the glaring sun, back of the railway track, the
white pony charged in a quick lope with Apache Kid bending forward and
urging it on. A whirl of dust rose and fell.

There was a shuffle outside on the platform of the men who had pumped
the doctor up getting into a shady place to wait for him; and then again
the silence, with the little ceaseless crackling in it, of the
grasshoppers and, inside, the faint clicking of the operator's
instrument.




CHAPTER IV

NEWS FROM HOME


I stepped over anon to the hotel for dinner. One or two men sat on the
verandah with a hungry look and I eyed them with interest, wondering
whence they had come; among them sat, with a dictatorial air, a tall
bearded man, with a lean, red face, bloodshot eyes, and a beard like
dirty tow. He saw me advance and said he:

"Good-day. Are you looking for the proprietor?"

"Proprietor?" said I. "I suppose he's inside."

The man gave a hiccough and said: "This establishment has changed hands.
I'm the pro-prietor here now."

I saw the scattered men look at him curiously. They had the air of not
taking part.

"Oh!" I said.

"Yes," said he, "Oh!--as you say. Do you want lunch?"

"Yes," I said, "I came over for lunch."

"Well," said he, "I'm very sorry, but I don't intend to have lunch here
except for residents. I can't serve people passing through. Are you a
hobo? I don't remember your face at all."

Now a hobo is a tramp, a beggar at doors, and so I looked this drunken
new proprietor, as he called himself, up and down, and said I:

"Seeing that I'm not going to eat at your house--not even if you put up
a free lunch--I don't see that you have any call to know anything about
me. Good-day to you--and I hope you may flourish in your establishment."

I wheeled about and trudged back to the dept, more than ever conscious
of my empty stomach and intending to ask Scotty if I could obtain a
lunch anywhere else, consoling myself, at least, with the recollection
of the tinned goods in the store--tinned salmon, tinned tomatoes, tinned
everything, all round the store in the deep shelves.

But hardly had I reached the platform, across the "square," than one of
those who had been sitting on the verandah came after me with a
"Mister!"

I turned about.

"Say, mister," he said, "that fellow ain't the pro-prietor. The ho-tel
ain't changed hands at all. Lunch will be on within half an hour. He's
only a fellow who comes in from his ranch about once a month and thinks
he's a sure-thing wag. That's what he calls his fun, going on like
that."

"Thank you very much, sir," I said. "I'll be over again for lunch, then.
Thank you very much."

"Be careful of the wag," he suggested. "He sometimes gets nasty when
people don't see that he's funny. The way you answered him just now
puzzled him. He weren't sure how to take it. He carries a gun--and I see
you don't." And with a nod he turned back for the hotel, but I
remained, for the time being, because the whistle of an approaching
train broke out far off in the hills, and I wanted to be on hand to help
to carry Douglas aboard.

Scotty had come on to the platform at sound of the whistle, carrying a
red flag.

"Going to flag this freight," he said, "and get Douglas in the caboose."

The locomotive with its string of sun-scorched cars came in sight;
Scotty waved his flag and the string drew slowly into the dept--the
conductor dropping off to see why he had been stopped.

"It's Douglas," said Scotty; "he's had an accident."

"The hell he has!"

So we carried Douglas into the caboose at the end of the string of cars.
The pump-car on which the Doc had come up was lifted on to a flat car,
the men piled into the caboose, the Doc followed--and away went the
train.

I was unsettled, restless. I felt that something was going to happen.
One does not often have such feelings in the sage-brush lands. Cities,
jostling crowds, going up and down in elevators, hanging on to straps in
crowded cars--these things breed the nervous sense of "something going
to happen." The sage-brush makes one "feel good."

It must have taken us some time to get Douglas aboard, for, when I
looked over to the hotel, I saw that the verandah was deserted. The men
had evidently gone in to lunch.

"When do you take lunch?" I asked Scotty.

"Eat lunch you mean," said he. "I eat lunch right now. When that freight
goes through I'm free till the west-bound passenger. Are you going
over?"

"Yes," I said.

"Wait for me, then, till I lock the door," said he.

"I shouldn't think you need lock a door here," I said.

"It's my instrument," he said. "I love that instrument of mine. I never
leave it without locking the door. You come in and I'll show you just
what kind of instrument she is. She ain't a railway one. I always pack
my own instrument everywhere."

And so he carried me in to expatiate on it while my stomach cried more
persistently for nourishment. The sage-brush lands nurture an appetite
in a newcomer that is nothing short of fierce. I think Scotty talked for
half an hour about his "instrument," waving his lean hands over it,
talking about it in the way some parents talk about their children.

Into us, thus employed, following a courteous knock, came the man who
had strolled over from the hotel after me a little while back to explain
about the waggish individual's waggish attempt to make me have a
lunchless day.

"Excuse me, gents," he said. "Lunch is pretty nearly through. If you
don't----"

"Oh, they always save me my lunch," began Scotty.

"I told the pro-prietor that you were wanting lunch, sir----" to me.

"We'll get," said Scotty, and waved his arm like a man herding hens,
seemed to bundle us out of the room, looking at the newcomer sternly, as
if he would bid him keep his eyes off the treasured instrument.

We had come to the platform steps at the end of the dept buildings, the
cowboy who had been so solicitous about my lunch a little in advance.

"What this?" he cried, looking across toward the hotel. There we stood
and stared. The hay-beard person who was "in town" to have a "good time"
was gathering up the reins of a very excited horse, a horse standing in
the shafts of a light buck-board like a hound in leash. From far off as
we stood even, we could see by the gestures of hay-beard, he sitting on
the seat with legs out-thrust, that he was grandiloquently inebriated. A
man ran out of the hotel door, dashed across the verandah, and snatched
for the horse's head. The horse swerved away. The man who had tried to
catch its head vaulted over the rail; but his feet sank so deep in the
sand that he half fell. As he did so hay-beard gave the whip a wild
sweep, yelled, wheeled away from the hotel, and fiercely urged the
horse. It plunged through the sand, found firmer footing on the
waggon-road that twined past the hotel and up to the railway track,
which it crossed on planks laid between the lines. Up came the
buck-board, hay-beard wielding the long lash of the whip. He drove
splendidly--too splendidly. There was too much drunken swagger about it.
He caught sight of us as he swept along the waggon-road, waved a mocking
arm to us, wheeled the buck-board abruptly at the bend on to the track
and--well! The next thing we saw was the horse galloping across the
track with a shaft hanging to left, a shaft to right; the buck-board
overturned; hay-beard on his chest, legs in air, chin sticking out like
one swimming, still clutching the reins. Then he went head over heels at
the sloping planks that led up to the track and rolled over and over
there. The horse simply crossed the track, wheeled about, flung its head
up and, turning round, trotted back to the hotel verandah--and stood
there.

Out of the hotel poured the men, and ran in the direction of hay-beard.
We, on our part, merely watched from the platform. Hay-beard rose, aided
slightly by the man who had tried to catch the horse from the verandah,
stood staring and feeling his side, felt his arm, and came over to the
dept, the cluster of men to rear, with evidently the owner of the horse
and buck-board strutting beside him with determined jowl.

"Is the Doc here? They tell me the Doc is here. Is he gone?" asked
hay-beard.

"Yap! Gone!" snapped Scotty.

"I've broke my arm, by----!" said hay-beard.

Scotty stepped down.

"Let me feel;" and he felt the arm. "Maybe it's only twisted. Yap!
Broken!"

"When's the next train?"

"You know the trains."

"I mean a freight train. Any freight before the passenger?"

"Nope! Not another;" and Scotty moved off.

"Oh well, I'll set in the shade here and wait for the train;" and
hay-beard, with his arm hanging loose, moved off to the end of the
station buildings.

"Couldn't you wire for the Doc again?" I asked.

"For him! No! He ain't got no appreciation. He's the kind of man if I
wire for the Doc he would think me his slave--and he would like as not
try to stand off paying the Doc his fee and I would go and offer to pay
it and the Doc would be indignant and say 'Call off--Call off'--and that
coyote would think he had done a smart deal. That's the kind of man he
is. Come and eat."

The little crowd thinned, even the owner of the buck-board departing
with a mere: "Well, mister, you're going to pay for a new buck-board
when you get on your legs again." We went to "eat" lunch, Scotty and I,
in the sun-blinded cool rear room of the hotel.

There had been plenty of incidents in that day. But I still felt more
looking on at a show than as if they were my own incidents. You
understand me? These were not my affairs.

We ate lunch and sat on the verandah afterwards with the remaining boys.
One by one they departed--disappearing from the verandah and anon
re-appearing on horseback and riding out of Black Kettle, one (who
carried no blanket roll on his saddle) riding away by the waggon-road
across the railway and straight up hill. Another (who packed a blanket,
I noticed) rode away back of Black Kettle into the great plain striped
with brush, and anon with sand and anon with grassy stretches. From the
end of the house one could see him fade in that immensity.

I sat there smoking, watching two more riders cross the track. I heard
the flap-flap of the boards as the ponies stepped across the crossing,
watched the horses go up and up--noted how they seemed, as they took the
last roll, very tall, and their riders very tall, then how they went
over the last roll like little boats over a wave, and disappeared.

At last one said: "It do seem a pity for him over there. Reckon I'll
step over and see how he's making out," and he stepped off the verandah
and went ploughing over to the dept buildings.

Just there he stopped and we who still sat on the verandah looked up. A
frightful yelling broke out Westwards and grew louder. Then a metallic
rattling. What was it? Was it the Dago gang? Had they come by some
liquor up there at the camp, and were they coming down to Black Kettle?

The rattling grew in volume--the rattle of a pump-car. There is a kind
of agitation comes over one when any noise breaks out that one does not
understand. It was a relief to recognise the sound of a pump-car. Then
suddenly round the bend came two horsemen, riding parallel with the
track; they were whooping, screaming; and on the track, urging their
pump-car and whooping and yelling, came the section gang, the gang whose
boss had been so decent to me.

It was only an arrival in town.

The men on the verandah smiled and tilted their chairs afresh and leant
their backs to the wall, puffed their cigars into a glow. The horsemen,
with final yells, rode clean up to the hitching-posts, flung off their
horses, and came over to the hotel (less elegant on foot than on
horseback, for they were both bow-legged with much riding) clattered up
the steps and entered. The section men's car slid into the dept beside
the platform before they could stop it. They stepped off laughing. Then
we saw them talking to hay-beard and presently hay-beard got up from
where he had been lying limp, and with much grimacing with the pain of
his arm got over to the pump-car and stood on it. The men all piled on
again and away they went, hay-beard propped in the centre beside the
pump.

"That section boss is a very good sort," said a man, bringing his chair
down from the tilt, rose, said: "Well, so-long, gents," and departed.

Scotty also rose, and stretched.

"Come over," he said. "I got to get over."

I strolled across with him, loafed for an hour or so about his door,
merely acclimatising myself, letting the air of the place lull me, but
still with that sense of waiting.

"Say! I forgot to give you your mail," said Scotty. "Something for you,"
and he handed me a fat packet that he had discovered.

It was a bundle of Old Country papers from a New York agency. I opened
them easily--thinking how cute I had been to write, before I went up to
the extra gang, for Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, London papers, all
together, and not to write for those only on and after the date of my
encounter with the black-mailing tramp, but for a full month before that
date.

It was, of course, only the Glasgow Herald I troubled about now. I was
the boy to cover my tracks, I thought. I was a "cute" individual. I
opened the Herald of the day after that trouble with the lurcher. I
glanced it through. No--no "Horrible Discovery."

I glanced through the next day's. No, nothing. I looked through the
Heralds for the whole week. Nothing! Nothing at all about the body
behind the bushes.

I looked up abruptly and found Scotty scrutinising me under his thin
brows and biting the ragged end of his yellowed moustache. He let his
gaze lose its intentness, did not look away, but gazed as it were
absently through me.

I returned to my perusal, but with a manner guardedly easy, looking up
and down the columns more lightly; I hoped not too lightly, lest my
change of manner might but increase Scotty's curiosity. Suddenly I saw
this:

"_The tramp who was found in the park overlooking Drummond Terrace three
days ago and taken to the Western Infirmary has regained consciousness.
Although he has clearly been assaulted, and is suffering from injuries
received, he will say nothing of how he came by his injuries._"

I sat back in my chair. I forgot all about Scotty again. I only thought:
"I need never have bolted at all!"

Scotty's beloved instrument was tick-ticking and he bent to it. The
tick-ticking went on. I sat looking at a muss of type, a haze of print.
I sat with the papers on my lap, staring--and then, slowly, my eye
seemed to focus to the print again. What was this? I choked, and stared,
and looked at the paper.

_Suddenly, at Jamieson Gardens, Jane Elizabeth Barclay_.

If that accursed tramp had been within reach I would have killed him
indeed then! He lived--and my mother was dead--no need to ask how--of a
broken heart at my non-appearance, at my disappearance. I stood up, so
Scotty told me afterwards, and raising my fist to heaven cried: "Oh,
God! Oh, God! Oh, God!"

But at the time Scotty was eager on something else and he only shouted:
"Shut up! Damn it!"

I sat down it seems. The instrument ceased to click its long message. He
turned to me and said:

"Say! Say! What do you think? The passenger has been held up at Antelope
Spring."

"Oh!" I said and sat with gulping breaths.

"Held up!" he shouted. "Who by, do you think? By the Apache Kid! What do
you think of that? They're going right through to Lone Tree--non-stop to
get next to the Sheriff there."

"Eh? Oh--that's very interesting," I said.

"My God!" he cried. "You--you're bug-house!" And he fled out to pour his
news into some more sane ears.

I heard anon a whistle scream outside--heard the roar of a train coming
into Black Kettle--heard it pass on, without cessation. The room hummed
with its passage and clatter--and then a whistle beyond Black Kettle
pealed out--another further off--and silence fell again.




CHAPTER V

GOVERNMENT BONDS


Enter to me, where I sat among the piles of Old Country papers, the
cowboy who had been so anxious about my lunch, a tall, rudely handsome
man, with bright eyes and bad teeth; in loose, cotton jacket, striped
black and white; and with leather chaps over his pants, belted and
gunned in the manner of his kind.

"Cheer up, mister," he said.

I looked up, more in amazement at his attitude toward me, I think, more
wondering what he bade me to cheer up over, than with any other thought.

"If you're gone broke, why I have a few dineros and you just got to say
the word and any little I can do--why there you are. I hear there's the
superintendent of the division coming up to see into the trouble at the
gravel pit where you bin working. Your money from the railway is safe
enough."

"It's not that," I said and rose and laughed. "I didn't think I looked
worried about it."

He looked at the pile of papers on the floor, looked at me, looked at
them.

"Bad news?" he asked.

"Very bad," I said. And then: "It can't be mended. There--it's past.
It's over."

He stood thoughtful a moment, hitched his chaps, put his thumb in his
belt.

"Do you want a job?" he asked.

"I do," I said. "I don't suppose I'm bound to wait here till the white
gang comes to the steam-shovel."

"Oh!" he cried, "that was the idee was it? No, sir--not you. A man like
you don't want a moling job. I see--you was broke and so you went on
with the Dago push till such times as the white gang would come along?"

I nodded.

"Pshaw! A man like you don't want to go burrowing in no railway
excavations. It's an outsider's job--making railways, hittin' spikes in
ties, and boltin' on fish-plates, and fillin' up trestle bridges. When I
heard you was on the railway I took no note of you. Then I heard you was
the one white man in a Dago push and I thinks to myself: 'He's either
plumb locoed, or else he's too green to burn, or else he's lookin' for
trouble.' Then I heerd the way you talked to Mike Mills--him that
meddled with Jamieson's high-stepper. Jamieson says he's going to get
the price of that busted buggy out of him so soon as he comes back with
his arm mended. I says to the boys: 'Is that there, then, the white gent
that has been working with the Dagoes?'--'That's him,' they says. So I
considered you was just ignorant here, though maybe wise where you came
from, and a pilgrim in a strange land. That was why I stepped over to
post you about Mike Mills's wit. And now, friend, I'm riding over to the
ranch and if you care to come with me--why--I guess there's a job for
you right there. You savvy horses do you?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Steers?"

"No," I said. "I know a little about sheep."

He seemed quite taken aback.

"You ain't ever bin a sheep-herder?" he asked plaintively.

"No," I said, "but at a place in the Old Country for two months every
year I used to do nothing but work among the sheep."

"I see--in your college vacation. College man you are?"

I nodded.

"I've met no end of college men," he said. "I had a partner in the
Panamint Country once--college man--Harvard--he was a teamster. Then I
took out once into the country back of the Tetons, a college gent who
had come West to photograph elk. He was all right. He was quite a white
man, and if he didn't savvy a thing he asked and learnt. But he didn't
have to ask much. He had the savvy, and could figure out most things
with looking at them thoughtful. Then once, right here, on this yere
platform, there comes along a hobo; he had got flung off the freight
half way between here and Lone Tree. Some devilment makes me throw a
lariat of friendship over him and corral him over into the ho-tel and
put tongue-loosener into him--Harvard man--Oh, straight goods! He wasn't
bluffing me. He told me a heap about his means of livelihood--low-down
and mean and all that, from my point of view, made me sick now and then,
but he had a kind of edge of humour on him that laughed at himself, and
I was not out to criticise him, but to hear more about other kinds of
life than my own. He asked me if I ever seed initials up on water-tanks.
'Sure,' I says,--'That's us,' he explains. 'Now I put up my sign
N.Y.Y.T.' 'Like a registered brand,' says I.--'Sure,' says he, very
friendly, 'And N.Y.Y.T. stands for New York Whitey. I'm the poet of the
hoboes,' he says and I asks him for one of his poems. It ha'nted me so
that I got him to sing it three times, him being that full of song and
stagger-juice. Here it is," and my new friend (Panamint Pete, by the
way, was his picturesque name) began to carol to me the ditty of
N.Y.Y.T. in a friendly attempt, as I understood afterwards, to "chirp me
up some!" He acknowledged his aim later, when we were better acquainted.
I had no idea, at the time, of his sympathetic intention as he sang:

_"It was at a Western water-tank
One cold December day,
Within an empty box-car
A poor dying hobo lay.

"His comrade sat beside him
With sad and drooping head,
And patiently he listened
To what his dying comrade said.

"'I am going,' said John Yegdom,
'To a land that is fair and bright,
Where the weather is always warm enough
To sleep outside at night;

"'Where hand-outs grow on the bushes,
And folks never wash their socks,
And little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks;

"'Tell my boy down on Clark Street,
The next time his face you view,
That I've taken the Great Eternal Freight,
And I'm going to ride her through.

"'Tell him not to weep for me,
In his eye no tear must lurk,
For I am going to the land
Where no man has to work;

"'Hark! I hear that centre whistle,
I must take her on the fly.
Good-bye, my dear old comrade
'Tis not so hard to die.'

"He closed his eyes, he bowed his head,
He never spoke again,
His comrade left him lying there,
And took the guts of an Eastbound train."_

"Yes, sir, that's the song of N.Y.Y.T.--New York Whitey--which he was
named because he was what they call prematurely grey--with a white head
of hair that would have made anybody gentle with him, and fatherly.
Well--say--do you figure on coming up with me and touching the boss for
a job? You can get your wages from Scotty here if----"

Scotty entered and Pete turned to him.

"Say! You could get this gent's wages and hold them for him till such
times as he calls?"

"Wages! Wages! Say! Have either of you touched my instrument? Wages!
Wages! Pshaw! There ain't no wages! The train's been held up, by heck!
Express safe emptied."

"You told me so an hour ago," said Pete, "and your little instrument's
been sneezing there powerful."

Scotty put his hand in his trouser pocket and drew forth a plug of
tobacco with a bite out of it, took another bite, and sat down to his
instrument.

As it tip-tapped, Pete turned to me and quietly said:

"What do you think?"

I nodded.

"Thank you very much. Yes, I'll come."

"That's right. You can git a hoss from old Colonel Kemp over at the
store. He runs a kind of livery stable. We'll look in again, Scotty."

"All right!" snapped Scotty, and off we went to Colonel Kemp, the silent
old store-keeper of the gruff but amicable "How-dos."

Yes, he had a "hoss." I would take care of it? I could have it for two
dollars up to the ranch.

"What about bringing it back? When will we be coming in again?" I asked
Pete.

The Colonel rose from the tub on which he sat and stared at me.

"That's all right," said Pete. "The colonel's hosses can come home fifty
mile, let alone fifteen. We raise sech hosses in old pigeon houses in
this part of the world and they learn the homing instinct from the smell
of the homers. Things is different here from back east."

I had but six dollars and out of that I paid the Colonel for the hire of
a restive cayuse.

I paid my bill at the hotel, bought a grey blanket at the store, as the
blankets I had bought when going up to the gravel pit were still there;
and then we rode over to the dept, where I stepped off on to the
platform and walked down to ask Scotty to see about getting my wages
from the railway.

"Better leave me a note," he said, "so that I can show it to the
pay-clerk when he comes along." He pointed to a pad and pencil on his
table.

"What shall I write?"

"I don't know--say--there's been a great hold up, Apache Kid and some
other man not known--just the two of them. Eh? Oh well," he scratched
his hair, already dishevelled with much scratching. "Well--Oh heck!--I
don't know. Say 'Dear Scotty, please get my wages due for work on Dago
gang when the pay-clerk comes up. I shall call for them when I'm in town
again.' By heck! A hold-up in this division--Apache Kid and another not
known! Ah! But that ain't all! Say, don't you tell anybody! I ought not
to tell you this, but you are not everybody--they've not only got a haul
of express money, but they've got a bunch of Government bonds!
Government papers! By heck! Apache Kid is up against it this time. He
was suspected once before, you know. I'm sorry. Liked that man."

"So did I."

"So you would, so would anybody. All right." He snatched my hand.
"So-long--I'll keep it for you all right," and he tapped the note I had
written.

"By heck, Government bonds!" I left him muttering: "That'll cinch up
Apache tighter than anything."

But Scotty had not as long a head as the Apache Kid. A good many people
were to be astonished at the use that the Apache Kid was to make of
these Government bonds.

I stepped out again, mounted the Colonel's horse. We rode across the
track, where the loose planks at the crossing said "Whack! Whack!
Whack!" under the ponies' hoofs, and took the roll of the first bench
out of Black Kettle.




CHAPTER VI

DIAMOND K


We mounted up the rolls of the benches less inclined for talk than for
relishing the motion of the horses under us.

There was something, that I can find no word to describe so well as
"callousness," had come into me--or perhaps I do myself an injustice,
perhaps I was merely stunned with regret, remorse. The words of the
newspaper announcement still danced before my eyes, but I refused to
consider them. I could not.

My deepest memory of these benches is my first. I seemed to look at them
out of the torture of humanity and see them as amazingly great,
spacious, and healing. Had I stayed over at one of these little hamlets
down in some deep caon, with a dark river thundering past and the high
caon walls shortening the day, I think, on receipt of the news, on
comprehending the needlessness of my flight, and considering the result
of it, I should have gone mad and dashed myself into the turbid creek.
Had I been in a city I think I should have run amok. And yet I do not
know. When, later, I told Apache Kid something of these feelings (for I
was to meet him again as you shall hear), he listened with a more robust
thing than sympathy--with pity--and then, with puckering eyes looked
into the distance, taking his pipe from his mouth and tapping his teeth
with the stem in a way he had.

"Yes," he said. "I know. The trouble is that many men who feel things
that way only go and get drunk."

We rode up, Pete and I, silently, to the topmost crest, advancing into
the golden sunset and lingering day, and turned around on the crest,
with hands on ponies' haunches looking back on Black Kettle. I remember
a queer thought I had then that, as a kid, I had pictured myself sitting
so, had sat so, aged seven, on a rocking horse, imagining. Some dreams
come true. But we change. I had not thought of the manner of man I might
be when the picture part of the dream should be fulfilled.

We looked down into the valley and already the railway line was dwarfed.
It was the merest, insignificant thread coming out of a hardly
discernible little hole in the hill to North-East, sweeping round the
foot of the benches and lost in the sand-hills South Westward. Even the
handful of roofs of Black Kettle, that from the car windows looked so
whimsically trivial in the landscape, seemed, from this high vantage,
far more important than the railway.

I was gaining a better-balanced view of things. We topped the rise,
riding on, and then I gasped. I think a good tonic for human misery, and
for human woes that lead us not through a narrow and darkened way into
some better prospect but lead us instead into a cul-de-sac, is change of
scene. We took the rise, and a high wind that stirred the bunch-grass
and the sage-brush and flicked the horses's manes, came freshingly on my
cheeks. But the great thing was, the farther view burst upon us: a
valley, sloping and widening beneath us with the silver of a creek in
its depth, with dotted trees low down, with belts of trees above, with
the green and grey of bunch-grass, sage and sand still higher, and, far
off, the white of snows glinting on the peaks of the loftier mountains.

We took the slopes to left and rode on along a half trail, half
waggon-road, feeling very high and airy. The valley had the appearance
of knowing two periods of the day at once; the Western slope already
showed the hue of twilight, the Eastern had the aspect of late
afternoon. There was just that indescribable sense of warning spoke to
one out of the colours, the lights and shadows, the kind of warning that
savage peoples, living close to nature, perfectly understand; as do
those fashionable persons of the East, where it is the habit to ring
thrice before dinner, understand the significance of the gong--to wash,
to be finished dressing, to file into the dining-room.

There was no attempt at ballasting on this half waggon-road, the passage
of hoofs and occasional waggons giving a kind of surface hardness which
made easy going for the ponies. They, too, freshened after climbing the
benches, tossed their heads in preparation for a quickening lope. At a
declivity they went with a swirl, at a rise they slackened.

Then suddenly raising my eyes I saw before us, by the trail-side, a
little house.

"This here," said Pete, "that we're coming to is what they call an
experimental farm. A man they call Johnson has come along up here and
reckons he can grow fruit-trees in the sand. We'll pull up and bid him
good-evening. You'll find him a diversion."

But my intuitive sense, very distinctly wakening, and I aware of its
awakening, told me that the cabin was deserted. It was not only the
intense silence of the slopes told me no one was there. Town folk, or
Easterners, may smile at this remark, and I do not blame them; but it
may have befallen them to come to some house in the city, to ring the
bell, to hear the bell clang within, and to have felt somehow that it
clanged in an empty house. I do not say an unfurnished house, but a
house in which there was no human being. If my reader still
disagrees--good, it is no matter; let us shake hands and pass on to my
yarn. Anyhow, the house was deserted.

We rode up to the door. Only silence. We dismounted. Only the breathing
of the ponies. Pete, with the reins in his hands, knocked at the door.

"Maybe sleeping," he said, "but I don't think so. Seems to be from
home."

He looked in at the little window.

"Say," he said, "the sight of that tea-pot on the top of the stove sure
invites me in."

He went back to the door and pressed it with his palm several times,
vigorously. Each time it gave a little. He gave a hard push and stepped
back so that the door sprung. Something fell within. He gave the door
another push and it opened.

"Nobody in," he said and put the reins of his pony over a hook at the
door, and entered. I followed.

"Stove still hot," he said. "Well, we'll make some tea and leave a
little note to tell Johnson that we looked in in passing and that his
blamed tea-pot looked so sociable that we took the liberty of using it."

He took up a stick, smartly whittled a pile of shavings into the still
warm stove, blew upon them, dropped in a match, and presently we were
tasting the rankest, but most relishable tea I think I ever imbibed.
Pete sat on the little table, swinging a leg; I sat on the edge of a
bunk.

"Sorry about that Apache Kid," he said suddenly. "I worked with him once
up Kettle River way. I remember the marshal of Baker City discussin'
hard cases with me, and saying that there Apache Kid was one of the most
interestin' so-called 'bad men' with whom he had ever had any dealings.
Up at Baker City some of the old timers is as full of stories of the
Apache Kid as a story book."

"Well," I said, "I think I may say that I owe Apache Kid my life."

"You mean up at the Dago gang?" he said.

I nodded, thinking over the affair.

"Can you recount that story?" he asked. "It was only a kind of a hint of
it I had from Scotty. Course we all knew something had happened when
Douglas got his head smashed. I was going to ask Scotty for the rights
of the story when he got plumb locoed over the news of the hold-up that
he got off what he calls his 'little instrument,' of which he's more
fond than a widower of an only girl. There was no use asking him for the
story then. Was it a Dago hit Douglas, anyhow? Shorely not."

"No, no," said I, and I told him the whole story. I had just come to the
point of saying: "And when that white Dago, as I suppose you'd call him,
came over to my side, and we stood there to put up what we both, I
expect, thought was going to be the toughest fight of our lives, over
the little rise above the pit--perhaps you know it?----"

"I know it," said he, "the old trail to Black Kettle goes down from here
round that way, on to the other side of the valley."

We had, then, just got that length, and I was saying: "Well, over the
top, and sliding his pony down to us, came the Apache Kid with his
revolver----"

"Gun!" said Pete.

"Gun," said I, "in his hand----"

"What's that?" said Pete suddenly, and rose, and I was aware that as we
had talked the twilight had been running into night. His face was
indistinct in this little interior, his rising form merged with the
shadows behind it. There was a slapping of ponies' hoofs outside the
door, a sound as of a cavalcade, a rush and a whirl, the creak of a
saddle as some one flung off, dismounting abruptly, and then a "Hallo!
Look up!"

Pete, who knew his country, relieved the situation.

"All right, gents," he hailed.

"Who's yere?" came a voice from outside.

"That you, Mr. Johnson?" said Pete.

"It's me. Who are you?" Mr. Johnson did not come into his own shack.

"It's Panamint Pete," said my friend, stepping out to the door; "your
tea-pot kind of invited me in and I accepted the invitation which I knew
you would have given. No offence, I hope?"

"No--that's all right," said Johnson's voice and he came to the door.
Suddenly he stepped back.

"Friend with you?" he said.

"That's all right," came another voice that I thought I knew, and very
smartly past Johnson and Pete, with three lithe strides, came the other
man.

"Apache!" I cried.

"Hallo, Kid!" he said. "It's you." He struck a match on his pants, lit
the lamp. "Come in, gents," he said.

Pete stepped in, his eyes watchful in the new lamp-light. Johnson stood
scowling. Pete sat down on a stool. He looked from Apache to Johnson,
then back.

"It's all right, Apache," he said. "We've heard the news."

Apache swung round quickly, but not towards Pete. It was towards
Johnson.

"He's all right, Jake," he said. "And now, gentlemen, would you be so
kind as to turn your faces to the wall and count twenty."

With a laugh Pete turned, and I turned also. There took place a great
rustling as of stiff parchment, a muttering between Johnson and the
Apache Kid, and then the Apache Kid's voice: "That's all right."

Pete turned.

"Only got the length of eighteen, Apache," he said.

"You always were a white man," said the Apache Kid. "Some men might have
counted forty in the time. Well, so-long boys. So-long, mister," to me.

I stepped over and held out my hand. The two train robbers moved outside
smartly, we heard the saddles creak as they mounted. There was a "Get
up! Get up, you!"--and away they swept in the growing darkness.

Pete strode over to the door and looked after them.

"Two led saddle horses," said he, "and two pack horses. They're going to
travel."

The dust fell on the road, the sound of the hoofs died abruptly.

"Well," I said, "I'm the last man to set up as a judge of the Apache
Kid, but do you know I was glad to shake his hand just now. It's a very
strange thing, but I never thanked him for what he did for me up at the
gravel pit. All the way down to Black Kettle, with Douglas, I was trying
to think out some way of thanking him. I would look at him and begin,
and then--no, couldn't do it. He didn't seem a man that one could
thank."

"Yes, I know," said Pete. "Here's to him, anyhow," and he raised the tin
panikin and drank the cold dregs of his tea.

And then we put the log back against the door, opened the window, put a
stick under it to hold it up as we crawled through, for it was innocent
of pulleys and weights--crawled through, mounted under the first stars
and rode on, took a narrow trail hitting off from this trail, and at
length, in the deep purple of the valley, a light flashed up like a
dropped star.

"That's the Diamond K," said Pete, and put spurs to his horse--which,
indeed, hardly needed the spur, being as keen as he on that final
spectacular rush home--let out a whoop, and a scream; my pony, not to be
outdone, stretched himself in pursuit, drew nearly level, and so, with
Pete screaming like eagles and howling like wolves, we swept down on the
Diamond K.




CHAPTER VII

APACHE IS SENTENCED


As it was so late when we arrived we did not send the horse back that
night, put him, instead, in a corral; and next morning led him out,
turned him head homeward; he received a resounding thwack with the flat
of Pete's hand on his haunch, and off he went, loping away, lonely, to
Black Kettle. A droll sight to my eyes, that riderless horse, loping
away along the rough track.

For the first fortnight there was nothing of the glorious life about it.
Pete had been right in saying that work was to be had for the asking in
his outfit; but I spent my time "bucking wood" as they call it, and
cleaning horses, helping the cook, and in any "spare time" shovelling
the stable dung on to an old stiff-hide, which the stiff old
"chore-hoss" would drag away and I would overturn beyond scent of the
ranch-houses. I do not know that I was a very cheerful new hand. I have
an idea that I was often scrutinised curiously when I was not supposed
to see. And, indeed, I felt pretty glum.

I was sensible enough, or callous enough, if that is the word, to know
that Time would heal what, for the moment, I simply had to keep
dismissing from my mind. The fatuity of my flight from Glasgow, if I
pondered on it, was enough to have driven me mad. And I think it would
be easy to go mad in such scenes, for there are times when the height
of sky and the great sweeps of the land strike one as so high, and so
vast, and so heedless, that, if one cherish any kind of contempt for
oneself, one must inevitably feel more insignificant.

Behold me, then, at the wood pile of the Diamond K, splitting wood, in
my belt, as the phrase is, swinging the axe and scowling as I kept
ousting the thought of my mother's death from my mind. Behold me at the
stable door, shovelling away on to the old hide, stopping at a hail from
the cook (an old rheumaticky Virginian, who had known the old cattle
business and showed it on face and form), and stoking his stove, winding
up water for him from the well, or wiping my hands to mix flour for him
when he was baking.

The only relaxation was in listening to theories regarding where the
Apache Kid might now be, and to stories of other road-agents,
train-robbers, and the like, which the Apache Kid's exploit, so close at
hand, made the sole topic of conversation. That was the only relaxation;
that, and revolver practice, with a discarded and battered pot-lid tied
on a pole for a target. I had my favourite horses and took a great
interest in learning their little ways. There was one, a waggon-horse,
that would not allow any one to come to it on the near side when it was
in the stable without trying to pin whoever came so against the wall. Go
into his head-stall on the off-side and he was wholly friendly. There
was another that, every time it crossed the threshold of the stable,
stood on its forefeet and flung up its hind legs in a vicious kick like
an attempt at a somersault. Nobody tried to cure these things. They were
looked upon as individual characteristics.

It was the custom, at the Diamond K, it being so near to Black Kettle,
for some one to ride in once a week for the mail, but the Apache Kid's
little escapade was too interesting for us to lose any link in the story
of it, and so every day saw some man ride into town. The owner, indeed,
now a good friend of mine, got so excited over the hold-up and the chase
that when, on the third day, he rode down to Black Kettle he simply
stuck there. On the fourth day no one rode in, but on the fifth the
foreman (now no friend of mine, and you shall hear why) took it upon
himself to send a man in, ostensibly for mail. He saw the owner, of
course, that bogus mail-seeker, but the owner was not the kind of man to
jump on him. He told us that on his return the foreman had asked:

"Did you see the boss?"

"Shore," replied the bogus mail-man.

"Asked you what you were in for?"

"Shore; and I says: 'For news of Apache Kid and the great hold-up,' and
he gives me a stack of papers he had bought from Scotty. 'Take these
back to the boys,' says he. 'The local colour was made in an office but
they've got the facts anyhow.'"

The local gossip from Black Kettle was carried home with that bundle of
papers and discussed. The newspapers were read and re-read with much
criticism--sometimes expression of disgust at a "newspaper gent's" lack
of "savvy," sometimes with expression of amazement at how much the
"gent" knew.

A further budget of Old Country papers came for me, handed over by
Scotty with a message to say that the railway pay-clerk had not yet
arrived, but he would remember. And in one of these papers, in three
lines at the foot of a column, my tramp, or hooligan, was dismissed for
ever with the words:

_"The man who has been in the Western Infirmary suffering from injuries
received in an assault has been discharged."_

I leapt up distractedly, and flung down the paper and trampled on it. I
thought no one was near, for I had gone outside the bunk-house to read;
but the old Virginian was sitting outside at the gable end, having lived
so long and heard of so many hold-ups that he was little interested in
hearing the odd fragments of the story, content to wait for the finish.

He rose and looked round the corner.

"'Tain't advisable," he said, wagging a finger at me. "I knew a man with
a face much after your kind who used to do that sort of thing frequent
and free, and one day he tried not to, when something vexed him, and he
went bug-house."

I laughed.

"Well," said I, "that means that he should have used his safety-valve."

"Pshaw!" said the old fellow. "I don't know about that. I would advise
rather that a man don't have no call for safety-valves. Never do what
you don't want to do. When you want to do a thing, do it. If anything
goes wrong--well, you've done your best. If it went wrong because of
you--you know what to mend in future; and I guess every man is always
learning. If it goes wrong because of outside folks--well, that's
hoomanity, and men is mostly fools, like mules, and you don't start out
expecting them to be like horses. Some folks expect them to be like
these yere Senators."

"Senators?" I thought, "Senators?" But I did not ask him what he meant.
Only, coming nearer, I saw that he was reading a 'Frisco Sunday paper,
discarded by the boys inside, and on the first page it had, in the
American fashion, a drawing in blent line and colour of a centaur, all
mixed up with the columns of print; and a great heading across the page
blazoned forth the words: "The Land of Centaurs--The Tehulches and
Gauchos of Patagonia."

Just then the foreman came over to me, and said he:

"Say, what is your name? I want to put you down in the pay-book."

"Barclay," said I. "William Barclay."

The old cook, who had come stiffly along to lecture me and had sat down
on the form where I had been sitting, looked up, stared at me, looked
down at the bench and puckered his eyes.

"Right," said the foreman, and walked away.

The old Virginian lifted from the bench the wrapper that had been around
the English papers, sent to me from the New York agency. He lifted it
up, frowned on it.

"'John Williams,'" he read, "'Black Kettle P.O. To be called for.' My
son--it ain't my business, and I don't want to hear; but you see, as I
said, a man's always learning. This here Apache Kid that they are
talking about wouldn't do that. When you take to running water you don't
want to blaze a tree beside the creek to show where you went in and then
blaze another to show where you come out. That would be plumb foolish. I
hope, all the same, it ain't anything serious."

Pete that day had gone into town, and in the evening, when the boys were
all in, after all the latest news of Apache Kid, which was practically
nothing, had been told, he turned to me:

"Oh!" said he, "Douglas is back at Black Kettle. He was asking for you.
Thinks a heap of you, he does. Scotty told him about you bringing him
in, you and Apache Kid. 'You tell that kid Williams,' he says, 'that if
ever he wants to go back on the railway he has only to come up to me.
And first time he's in town anyhow, ask him to look me up."

The foreman, sitting at the table, looked up.

"Williams? What did he call him Williams for--Barclay is his name," said
he. But as among ourselves we bore only nick-names it was not a question
which any one was going to enter into with interest. Besides, there were
newspapers to read so as to keep posted on the Apache Kid.

The full story of the hold-up was being told by now in the papers. The
engineer was interviewed, the conductor was interviewed and
photographed, and his wife too. "Conductor's Wife Hears News. Plucky
Woman," said the glaring headings.

"'A Former Hold-up Told by the Hold-up Man. Just Released from a Long
Sentence,'" one of the men read out. "What in thunder has that got to do
with Apache Kid?"

Grumbling, his voice went on reading down the headings.

"Oh say! Now this is too bad. 'Apache Kid and the Kelly Gang of
Australia. The Hold-up by Apache Kid Recalls the Doings of the Famous
Kelly Gang of Australia'--and then three colyumes about the Kelly Gang
of Australia. Say! Now! That's a very or'nary kind of bluff."

It was on the sixth day after the hold-up that we had the astounding
news of the capture of the Apache Kid. Excitement died a little then and
we settled down to await news of the trial.

He had absolutely no show, neither he nor his partner Johnson. But it
made curious reading. The ranch above Black Kettle (that experimental
ranch where roses were to grow out of a heap of cinders, you remember)
had been visited and it was proved that the experimental farm was a
bluff. It was only a place from which to go forth to the hold-up. The
land had been rented genuinely enough, rented for a year--and the first
instalment paid, which looked as if the hold-up men had been certain of
a big haul some time. Hold-up men don't generally do things so
deliberately. And besides that, there was a fair sum of money in the
train they had robbed; fifteen thousand dollars. How did they know of
this? Or did they know? Was it by accident or design that they had held
up the train on that special day?

These were the facts of the hold-up, shorn of all unnecessary
embellishments.

At Placer, Johnson, who had been down there looking at some experimental
fruit farms where some fruit growers were working on the irrigation
principle, had boarded the train. At Antelope Spring the Apache Kid had
come aboard and just after the train pulled out, when the conductor had
passed through to the end, they had walked on to the forward platform of
the first pullman. Apache Kid had marched straight on into the
baggage-car, very quietly indeed, with a paralysing suddenness. Johnson
must have jerked open the door for him for he was in the doorway before
the baggage-man and the express-man were aware, with a heavy revolver in
either hand, and the wonted: "Throw up your hands!"

One safe was open, I do not know why, but I have heard of open safes on
trains before. The other was shut. To begin with Apache bade his men to
keep their hands up and then, dropping one "gun" into a pocket, he
rummaged the contents of the large safe into a bag, walked backwards to
the door, dragging the bag thither, dropped it there. Then he ordered
the express-man to open the other safe. The express-man said he had no
key, told Apache Kid that the keys were in duplicate, and that one was
kept at either end. Apache, with his other "gun" now in his left hand,
plucked forth again, after dropping his bag at the door, walked over to
within seven paces of him and said:

"I'm going to count three. When I say one I expect you to think about
it, when I say two I'll expect you to drop your hand and fork out the
key. You have a little Derringer in your vest pocket. Don't try to touch
it. A Derringer is small. It's a good 'gun' for a vest pocket; but
without arguing whether you'd get it out slick enough, allowing even
that you could--which I guess you couldn't" (and he laughed, a mad laugh
that I was yet to hear more of), "I guess it wouldn't kill me
instantaneously--and then I'd plug you sure. Now then--One!"

The express-man stood firm.

"Two!"

The express-man went pale but stood firm.

"Three!"

Apache Kid pressed trigger but it missed fire.

"Hm!" he said. "It won't do that again. It doesn't happen twice. And I
may tell you that if you don't act at two this time, you and this other
gent both get it," and he nodded determinedly and said: "One--two!" very
quickly.

"All right," said the express-man.

The baggage-man said at the trial:

"I got to admit that I don't think that was a miss-fire. I think that
chamber had no shell."

There was a gasp in the court and Apache Kid broke out:

"You're right, sir! But I wasn't going to say anything about that. Some
other humane person in my profession might try the same bluff, and I
didn't want to spoil him if he did. Now he daren't! I don't mind telling
you that when I saw what kind of man--" and he was ordered to be silent;
but reporters suggested the hiatus was: "--when I saw what kind of man
the express-man was I knew he would be moved if I said I'd kill both of
them."

It is well known how such incidents weigh juries. A bit of fine gallery
play, if only it be good enough to seem not gallery play but the "real
thing," will weigh immensely; in France perhaps more than in America. Of
late years it has been very noticeable in English trials, though in
England it generally leads not to the pardoning for the sake of a
sentiment, but to the conviction of one, the making of him into a
scapegoat, this especially if it is a dull season and what are called
"the pipers" have had time to get photographs of everybody concerned,
and one of the suspected persons happens to have a wart on the top of
his head, or some such thing that offends public taste.

The judge seemed in a panic lest Apache Kid might say too much and win
the jury's heart. Johnson was safe enough; he would not come off worse
than Apache, for Apache was the leader of the action. The jury,
listening to the story as mere men, might think Apache was the better
man and consider that Johnson had a snap, but they could not make
Johnson the scapegoat in face of Apache's leading in the hold-up.

The safe was opened to him at the word "Two!" on that second attempt. He
treated its contents as he had treated the contents of the first, and
backed to the door with them in a bag.

One of the journals contained an interview with the makers of the
special kind of bag that was used--to give the public something at least
connected with the case while the chase was yet hot after Apache Kid,
and before it could be either said that the robbers had got clean away
or, on the other hand, that they were certain to be captured.

I give you the story in the way I got it--bits of gossip from Black
Kettle, an article in this paper, an interview in the next.

On the steps Johnson stood guard. What was he supposed to do there? He
was asked that question point-blank at the trial.

He laughed and said:

"Why, shore, if the conductor had come out there again I would have
politely asked him to keep me company a spell, told him that there was
a gent in the baggage car transacting a little bit of business at which
he must not be interrupted."

But the conductor did not come out. A mile on the other side of Adobe,
Apache stepped over to the two men, with whom he had been chatting, or
rather, before whom he had been conducting a monologue, and annexed
their weapons, for both were armed. Then, with a warning to them to stay
where they were till the train not only stopped, but had started again,
he retired, backwards, covering them still, and gave Johnson a leg up to
the baggage-car roof--no mean feat of gymnastics that, for the
baggage-car roof had overhanging eaves. Then Johnson ran along the roof,
jumped to the tender, and held up the engineer.

"What did he say, engineer? What were his words?"

"Oh, he just says: 'Say, engineer--pull her up!'"

"And you pulled her up?" the engineer was asked.

"Yes--he had a Colt in his fist and he had the drop on the cab from the
tender."

The train pulled up. Apache Kid, on the instant, had flung off the two
bags, leapt off himself and ran back from the train to where he could
have an eye on the engineer, and on the baggage-car platform, and the
platform of the first car.

The conductor came running forward when the train stopped. Johnson was
jumping down via the tender, so the conductor did not see him. Apache
hailed the conductor:

"Get back into that car, conductor--lively!"

Johnson, alighting at the track side, waved a "gun" at the engineer,
called out "Go ahead" and the engineer was only too eager.

"Did you see any one waiting where they got off?"

"No."

"You saw the horses?"

"No; I expect they were back in the bushes."

Apache Kid was asked if there was any one holding the horses.

"You are doing the trial," said he, "you'll have to find that out--" and
again was called to order.

The train sped on to Lincoln, not stopping at either Black Kettle or
Lone Tree and there the Sheriff had an Indian tracker ready from the
Lincoln Reserve and a posse sworn in ready to go back to the scene of
the hold-up.

The judge commended all this promptitude, and commended the railway
servants for getting a special train into the siding at Lincoln, ready
to go East. The Indian tracker from Fort Lincoln reservation accompanied
the posse, sworn in by the Sheriff, the special train ran back. The
papers were very glad of that Indian tracker. He gave them a help in
keeping up the interest during a lull. There was an article (and a very
good one too), in the Times on "The Redskin's Sixth Sense."

I have seemed to jest too much about "the papers," and so I had better
say that that article I cut out and kept with one or two others. You
will think I am only mentioning this fact to show what a good judge of
letters I am! It was initialled with initials I did not know at the
time--but in after years I came to know them as the initials of one of
America's most interesting writers on matters pertaining to all the
"Back of Beyond," from the forgotten trails of Arizona to the men who
keep the line secure in Alaska.

There was no doubt that Apache Kid's hold-up made a stir. There was
still a deeper reason than the reason merely of the doing of it. It came
out that a great deal of money had been going on that train, and many
people wanted to know how Apache Kid and Johnson knew of it. Had they
"somebody back East in the know?" Was there some magnate, some man in
high places, before a roll-top desk, frock-coated and tube-trousered,
and immaculately groomed, instead of in hand-me-down store clothes, with
chaps over his pants, and dishevelled hair under Stetson or sombrero?
But not even a slick reporter, with that suggestion behind him to egg
him on, could find a great secret of intrigue. It made a fine heading
picture, a road-agent shaking hands across the top of six columns of
print, with a double-chinned, clean-shaven gentleman, in the neatest
Broadway cut. But there was no reading matter to make the picture good,
as they say. The reading matter only suggested. Perhaps a shrewd guess
that, if there were such a person, he would not be found, made the
editor decide to use the heading over the article that suggested his
probable existence instead of holding it over to head the account of his
discovery. Besides, if he did exist--and were discovered--his discovery
would need no picture head. It would be a big enough matter without
that.

It was rather amazing to learn, after such a daring performance, that
the road-agents had been run to earth within a week, surrounded, held up
with their boots off, both sleeping by the fire--and never a shot fired.

All that Apache Kid said when he woke to the hail of "We've got you
covered!" was:

"Well gents, you might have made a record for quick capture on somebody
else. We never expected this. You see, we reckoned we might get but
little sleep next week, so we were taking a little this."

The judge broke in that it was not necessary to hear what persiflage the
prisoner had indulged in. It was well enough known, he said that
representatives of the law and road-agents, and men of such kidney,
often (as it is called) "josh" one another.

"There has been too much," said he, "of this irrelevant comment."

There is no doubt that the judge wisely saw the danger of Apache Kid's
insouciant methods creating a picturesque glamour round him and blinding
the jury to the fact of a very calmly planned, well-considered hold-up.

Its perpetration had indeed been long in the minds of the two men, if of
no others, their suspected accomplice in the East, and the possible
holder of the horses at the place where they alighted. The experimental
farm was a bluff to keep them in the vicinity. They had built their
shack there, but had done little besides. About all they had done was to
make a rough irrigating sluice, such as placer miners use, from a little
lake in the benches. To the eye of the scarce-interested, somewhat aloof
and bantering cow-man, riding past, it looked as if some work was being
done. The sluice was visible, and boards had been hauled from Black
Kettle and were stacked beside the shack as if there was intention to
continue the work. That was all. Another man, higher up the valley, one
Mike Mills, was similarly employed and had been there long before
Johnson arrived--so the irrigating ditches were thus less of a novelty.

I began to suspect that Apache Kid was the chief mover in all this. He
had been in the country some time--had worked a year on the range of one
of the chief cattle companies. It seemed odd that, when Johnson came in
to experiment with vegetables, Apache should quit the ranch and hire on
with him. The hold-up, too, was chiefly in his hands. At the trial he
was more to the front. Johnson may have been nominally the boss at the
ranch. Apache was boss of the hold-up.

The trial hung fire a few more days while further evidence--as if there
were not sufficient already--was sought for. At the Diamond K work went
on as usual; and sport too, in the evenings. The everlasting poker was
played. Our rope expert practised "stunts" outside. Pete and I shot at
the pot-lid. I got a discarded revolver to practise drawing and snapping
with, for Pete explained that to snap an unloaded revolver much spoiled
the action, and to practise drawing and potting with a shot every time
would run away with too much ammunition for a poor man. But that very
night, on which we received the report of the first day of the trial, I
ceased to be exactly a poor man, for one of the boys who had ridden into
town brought me my railway wages from Scotty. I don't suppose I was
named by Scotty. It would likely be: "You know that fair young fellow
that's just gone up to your outfit? You give him this;" so far as this
matter went there was no confusion. What I was called among the boys, if
ever I was mentioned, would be simply "the cook's bitch." When I was
addressed directly I was "Scot" because of my accent.

To us all this man brought news which Scotty had received over the
wires, of Apache Kid's sentence (and Johnson's too)--Johnson, fourteen
years; Apache Kid--life!

Again a day or two's expectancy and then came papers with the full
account of the trial.

"Well, that's the end of that," said the foreman.

"No, it ain't," said the man, who had been into town that day. "I got a
crusher to tell you. Scotty--the brass-pounder--is bug-house down at
Black Kettle. Came tearing along the platform to tell me, seeing I
wasn't everybody and could keep it Q.T., an astounding piece of
news--what do you think?"

"What?"

"He says there's some arrangement for the papers to keep dark about it."

"Oh, pshaw! Them papers--" and the foreman indicated the paper-carpeted
floor--the papers under bunks, the pictures from them tacked on the
wall.

"Well," said the man, "Scotty told me with his eyes sticking out like a
frog's when a swamp runs dry, that the Apache Kid and two troopers were
coming down the line from Fort Lincoln."

"What!" we cried.

"That's what. Apache Kid and two troopers coming down from Fort Lincoln
to-night by special train. He thinks they're going down to where the
hold-up was. What's that for? He's sentenced already and by rights he's
in the Pen', and begun his hard labour--and here he is travelling down
the line in a special cyar like a millionaire, with Government
attendants."

"Queer story," said the foreman. "Was there a mail for the boss?"

"Yap."

The foreman departed. When there was a mail for the boss he always went
over to the boss's bungalow lest there might be some special
instructions to give.

As it happened there were. He came back presently, into the talk, with a
letter.

"Say," he said, "you, Steve--and you--and you," selecting three men,
"you start right away in the morning. There's a letter here from the X
Diamond X to say that a bunch of our steers is on the headwaters of
Number Three Creek. You know that bit of country, Steve, don't you?"

"Yap."

"Well, you start right out to-morrow. Tell the cook to-night that you're
going. It'll take you a week I guess. He says they ain't bunched very
good, but straggling up and down in the gulches."

In the old days, I may mention, this kind of thing was unknown, but in
my time it was one of the common events of ranch life. In good weather,
and if the ranches passed _en route_ were friendly ones, such a trip was
looked forward to.

I wished I might go off with these boys. It would be an experience. But
in the morning they were gone and there was I doing what is called
"jumping lively into the wood pile."

The foreman came over and looked at me.

"Say," he said, "you want to quit that. You go and saddle that sorrel
with the streak down its back, and take your blankets, and get some grub
from the cook, and pile after these three men. You know the way. Down by
the waggon road from Black Kettle, but when you get down about five mile
you'll see a trail cutting across to West--it's clear enough--and
there's a blaze anyhow on a fir where it takes off. You go on there,
it's maybe till noon, and then the trails fork again. The one straight
on is the Three Bars. You take the other; but if you burn the trail some
you're liable to catch them up thereaways. I guess you can fry bacon and
beans and flip a flap-jack?"

"I guess I can now," said I, and laughed, "and make bread too."

I went off as gay as a chipmuck, speeding down the waggon road towards
Black Kettle with my eye lifting for the blazed fir which, of course, I
had not noticed on my way out to the ranch, it being dark on that
occasion.




CHAPTER VIII

AT THE HOLLOW TREE


The pony was fresh and I let him take the gait he wanted, rejoicing in
his motion under me, the flip-flapping of sand from his hoofs,
reminiscent of the spraying of waves from the cut-water of a sailing
skiff. I prefer the long stirrup leathers of America to the short ones
so much in vogue in the Old Country; I, for one, get into better harmony
with the horse, riding so.

Away we went, bringing the solitary pine tree by the trail-side closer.
I chanced to look round once, and a pennon of dust behind the horse's
heels exhilarated me. It seemed to swirl away behind about the eighth of
a mile--like the flying wake of a sailing skiff. I promised myself,
sometime, when my horsemanship improved, to ride lying back with my head
on the pony's haunches, seeing nothing but the sky over me and imagining
myself on Pegasus.

And then came into my head my sorrowing mother as last I had seen her;
anon ticked in my ears Scotty's beloved instrument as we flip-flapped
forward. Loose ends of recent occurrences fell away altogether when at
the bend I saw, ahead of me, a little flutter of dust. It struck me that
the three cow-punchers, on whose track I sped, must have ridden very
easily. Then it struck me that the little cloud was not passing ahead of
me, but drawing nearer. It fluttered and was dissipated downward, and
there was disclosed--nothing at all.

I could hardly think it was a dust whirl in a wind, for it had quite the
appearance of the dust raised by loping hoofs such as my pony was
raising in less volume. I rode on, wondering a little, and then came to
the high fir with a blaze on it, standing back from the trail on which I
had been riding, and saw the old trail running past it. It was here that
I had seen that flutter of dust.

"Perhaps," thought I, "it was, after all, Steve and the others; and I
saw the cloud just as they turned aside. Perhaps they had made a dash
into Black Kettle to hear more of the strange story about the Apache Kid
and two troopers coming down the line. No! They could not have ridden to
Black Kettle and back to this point in the time. And yet the cloud that
I had seen had been advancing to this point as if from Black Kettle."

My pony whipped about a little here, having evidently expected me to
ride straight on, taken unawares by the pull of the off rein and the
pressure of the near thigh; and as he wheeled in the agitated manner of
these Western ponies, I looked at the sand of the trail. I could see the
fresh marks, of the hoofs that I had been following, turn aside here;
also there was another fresh track coming from Black Kettle, wheeling
round here too and whelming with the track of Steve and his two
companions. Perhaps, in telling the story to you now, you, because of
the clue of my title, if nothing else, have your suspicions aroused; I,
at the time, had no suspicions. I merely rode gaily on down the trail.

Up hill, down dale, a rise and a dip, a rise and a dip, a rise--and then
I reined up; for, below me, beside an old withered tree with a great
cavity in it, were two blue-coated troopers and another rider whom I at
once recognised as the Apache Kid. Something in the air made me rein up.
I remember how I took in the whole sweep of this dip, saw a long-eared
jack-rabbit scuttling up hill and bounding off, saw some little
chipmucks on the slope jumping on stones--sitting up like six-inch
kangaroos, jumping between stones, jumping up again and sitting with
heads as incessantly twitching left and right as some little wren in an
English hedge.

I saw Apache Kid back his horse away from the two troopers, stretching
his legs out from its flanks; I saw him make a gesture of his hand to
the hollow tree. One of the troopers sidled his horse closer to Apache's
pony. The other trooper, looking almost suspiciously at Apache (I
noticed the turn of his head), shook the rein, rode smartly to the tree,
dipped his hand. Apache raised his head and said something to him, then
gave his attention again to the trooper by his side.

The trooper by the tree drew off the thick gauntlet from his right hand,
thrust his arm in the hollow again, more deeply, and then drew forth a
sheaf of papers.

And just at that, too quick for me to follow the action, I saw a quick
motion on the part of the trooper who sat his horse beside Apache's, saw
a quick motion of the Apache Kid; he had grasped the trooper's wrist.

He who had drawn forth the bundle of papers was thrusting them under his
thigh with his right hand, turning his horse about with the left. Apache
adroitly backed his own horse, kicked the horse of the trooper, whose
wrist he had grasped, in the belly, so that he drove it forward, and
thus put this man between him and the one who had drawn forth the
papers. A deliberate dog that latter! He took his revolver from its
holster as a slaughter-man might take the knife to cut a trussed sheep's
jugular and rode towards the two. He was going to make no mistake of it.

I sat spell-bound for a moment, looking on; then I put spur to my pony
so sharply that he leapt forward as if he had been ejected from a spring
gun, and I held my revolver up as Pete had taught me, raising and
lowering my fist so that every time I brought it down I had the trooper
covered.

All looked up and saw me.

"Don't shoot!" I shouted.

Perhaps it was as well that this was my first adventure of the kind;
there are times when greenness is a defence. Had I shouted the more
usual "I have you covered!" or "Throw up your hands!" I am inclined to
think that the trooper might have let fly at Apache, and chanced me. As
it was he held up, as if to discover my business and so, reining up, I
came down into the dip beside them.

The belligerent trooper sat with his gun-hand lowered; I rode down with
my hand raised and looking along the sights, my hand as steady as if
that trooper's head was the pot-lid on the twisted juniper behind the
horse-corral back at the Diamond K.

Apache Kid's voice broke out:

"Thank you, my son. If he budges that right hand then let her go. It's
too good a hand to pass, and if you do pass this one you'll never sit in
to another game."

I felt the beginning of a nervousness. I felt the beginning of a
self-consciousness--a tremor in my hand.

"Drop that gun!" I said to the trooper; and when I heard my own voice
snap out I knew how very deeply I meant it.

So did he. He gave me one short look that was as full of the longest
thoughts as any look I had ever seen up to that date. Then he dropped
his gun.

Apache and his man were still performing a kind of mounted wrestle, the
trooper wriggling his wrist, Apache holding on. The devilment of the
thing woke in me; I rode over and, my gun-hand raised, calmly lifted the
holster flap on the trooper's saddle, while Apache's left hand slipped
across and appropriated the weapon.

The troopers had still their rifles in the buckets, but it was safe for
Apache then to let go his hold. He backed his horse from them; I also
backed a little, keeping both under surveillance, for Trooper No. 1 was
up to some game. His mount was twisting and twisting and twisting in the
sand, not wholly because of its own nervous build, for I could see the
trooper's thighs pressing. He was looking powerfully thoughtful. I think
he was speculating on the chances of a strategic wheel and the throwing
up of his rifle; but Apache saw it all.

"Well, gents," he said, and he tapped his chest. "I have my paper here,
you have your papers there. If I was sure that this little game of yours
was all your own I would plug you both and leave you here with the
bonds, fulfilling my part of the bargain; but I don't know but what
you've been put up to it. You can have the benefit of the doubt. Go on!
Mosey!"

Trooper No. 1 backed his horse, backed and backed. Apache had his
gun-hand raised with the confiscated gun at the ready, so I ceased to
devote my attention to his man, but kept an eye on Trooper No. 2. But
Trooper No. 2 was not going to risk laying a hand to his rifle.

"Mosey!" said Apache to him in turn--and he "mosied," not backing from
us like the other, but riding slow, and laughing to himself, back to the
trail.

As they mounted the hill over which I had just ridden on them, Apache
and I rode up the hill ahead, cutting across it diagonally, looking back
on the two troopers. When they had fairly gone on the back track Apache
turned to me and said no word of thanks, merely held out his hand, which
I took, and leaning each to each from our saddles, we grasped hands
warmly.

"Where on earth did you come from?" I said.

"From going up and down on the earth, from wandering to and fro," said
he, and I can remember still the strange look in his eyes, something
lurking in among their speckled hazel as he turned his head and looked
at me. It was like the imp that looked out of the bottle. It stands to
reason that there was some kink in that man. I ignored the warning of
devilment in his eye at the time. He had saved my life, I had saved his,
and though he was a road-agent and so forth, as far as he and I were
concerned there had been nothing but straight dealing. With me he was
white--and would always be white. And yet there was that look in his eye
then. I suppose I had spotted that in him which brought him in the end
with his back to the old Pueblo wall at The Triangle outfit.

"Well," said he, and I let slip from me the discussion that had begun in
my own brain, very quickly, as to whether I had got into exactly what
you might call "good company"; "I have just come back," said he, "from a
very horrible place that must be nameless. As I daresay you have heard,"
his voice was what, as boys, we used to call simply "cheeky," "I was
recently tried on a charge of having held up the Chicago Sonoma, and
S.W. The evidence was absolutely all against me; which, considering I
was guilty, seems a little droll." He gave me the imp twinkle again. "At
any rate I was sentenced, perfectly justly, to a term of life
imprisonment. And then came a tug-of-war.

"Behold me in my cell, waiting, for the Governor. And my expectations
were not disappointed; the only difference was that I was taken before
the Governor--I was asked to visit him instead of him visiting me.

"'Now Apache Kid,' said he, 'I suppose you have secreted the money?'

"'No doubt about it,' said I.

"'Was there anything else beside money?' said he.

"I looked at my two gaolers on either side.

"'Governor,' said I, 'I have something to say to you. It is going to be
a pretty big deal, and it is going to come off; and after it comes off
you won't want any one to know anything about it. Tell these two men to
step outside and I'll show you my first card.'

"He looked at me thoughtfully, and then he nodded to them, and they
slipped out.

"'Yes?' said he when they had closed the door.

"'May I have a chair?' I said.

"He signed to a chair and I sat down.

"'You want to ask me about some Government papers, do you?' said I.

"I expected he'd arranged some plan of campaign for himself, had it all
cut and dry; but he was not dealing with some ex-hobo who'd graduated
through the various classes from intimidating lone ladies, through
shop-lifting and watch-snatching, to holding up a gun at some man, and
the first thing he knew being landed on his back before his bousy finger
could press the trigger."

Apache stopped.

"You'll pardon the egotism," he said, "but I was doing a pretty big
deal--Apache Kid versus the United States of America, so it wasn't
likely I was going to stand talking to its first representative." He
gave a snort. "Don't you mistake me either," he said. "I don't mean that
I was at all liable to end standing up and answering the President. I
fully expected to have to face half the railway magnates and half the
senators in these states before I got through; and I was determined, as
each man went down, and his boss came up, to sit easy in my chair. I
could see myself, at the end, in the White House with my feet on the
stove. That's the only way to go in for a big deal. That was how I felt
anyhow. In the language of the country I felt good," he snapped.

"I had my plan of campaign," he went on, shaking the rein and clicking
to the pony, "I was going to put all my cards down to each one in
succession, and I knew from the word 'go' what I was going to ask. I got
it! No, sir, I didn't. I had to let one of my chances go."

He reined in his horse, shook his fist in the air, cursed for five
minutes.

"Just a little more sand and I might have got it," said he. "Well--I'll
tell you. I said to that Governor:

"'You want some bonds. I can get them for you, and in return I want a
full pardon, signed, sealed, in my breast pocket, and a full pardon for
Johnson, signed, sealed and in his breast pocket.'

"I sat back.

"'That's all,' I said.

"And then we sat and looked at each other; we sat such a heck of a long
time that the two gaolers came in before they were rung for. The
Governor looked at me again, and after having glanced up at them, sat
and looked at me again for another heck of a long time and then he said:

"'All right, take him down.'

"I was left alone the rest of that day.

"They came for me the next morning and walked me up, opened the door,
ushered me in and stepped back, closed the door. There was a big-bellied
man with gold armour across his paunch sitting beside the Governor. I
knew then that I had won the first trick. I had half expected some
return to medival tortures, but no--this new man was a Congressman, and
a Congressman with a very big interest in the C.S. & S.W. Railroad.

"'Well, my man,' said he.

"'Pardon me,' said I. 'I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance.
Introduce us, Governor.'

"'You are the Apache Kid,' said the Congressman.

"'You forget, sir,' said I, 'that though my fame is scattered broadcast
and my portrait, I have no doubt, decks the front page of all the best
Sunday papers, politicians are not so popular as train robbers.'"

Apache chuckled.

"That buck laughed. 'Sit down,' he said, 'I'm ----,' and he gave me his
great name.

"'Pleased to meet you,' I said.

"I did not put my heels on the table. I fully expected to see a better
than him yet.

"'Now,' said I, 'there is a little bit of business we might discuss.'

"'About some bonds?' said he.

"'About some bonds,' said I. 'Let me put the proposition before you. I
want a pardon in my pocket, a pardon in friend Johnson's pocket, and the
bonds will be yours.'

"He sat and looked at me. He sat and looked a heck of a long time, and
then he turned and looked at the Governor and nodded his head. After all
it does stand to reason that a man does not become a political big bug
without having some kind of savvy when he has met a man who is liable to
call the deal on him. He stood up and smiled at me. He stepped over and
held out his hand.

"'My boy,' he said, 'I'll do my best for you;' and I was on my guard. If
ever a man calls you 'my boy,' shakes hands with you, and puts his left
hand on your shoulder while he's shaking; or if ever you're having a
discussion with a man and he says to you 'as between one man and
another'--keep your eyes skinned; he's got wax on his nails.

"The warders came in then and I hiked back to that cell. No hard labour
yet, no talk about it. No cessation of grub, no beginning of starvation.
Three days passed and then I am walked up again--Governor, Political Big
Bug, and a man I couldn't fail to recognise, Senator Davis, railroad
magnate, steel king, wheat-cornerer. I nodded to the Governor; I nodded
to the man who was going to do his best for me; I stepped over to
Senator Davis and I held out my hand.

"I said: 'Well, Senator, I do not think we need an introduction, so we
may as well get to business.'

"He looked just mad and amazed all in once.

"The Governor frowned. The man who wanted to be good to me giggled, a
sick giggle, and wagged his head as if to say: 'I told you so!'

"Senator Davis pointed to a chair, and I sat down.

"'Now,' he said, 'I hear you've been giving final propositions. You're
the kind of man if you were selling a horse and wanted a hundred dollars
for it you wouldn't ask a hundred and fifty and let them beat you down,'
and he paused and waited for me to signify my assent. But I just sat in
that chair listening; so he went on.

"'You would ask a hundred dollars, and if they offered you seventy-five
you would say to hell with them.'

"I nearly shouted: 'That's the kind of man I am!' but I didn't. I only
said: 'You're on the way to an understanding of me.'

"His little eyes just gave a little roll and looked at me; the man who
wanted to be good to me wasn't looking at me at all--he was looking at
the Senator; the Governor had his head down and he was either looking at
his chin or the second top button of his waistcoat.

"The Senator opened a paper with an official seal on the tail of it, and
said he:

"'Well, you can flatter yourself that I've come from Washington
specially to see you. That's pretty big, isn't it?'

"'It's pretty good,' I said.

"I could feel the others looking at me. There was a bit of a pause, and
then the Senator said:

"'Let me hear your offer again.'

"'Full pardon for Johnson,' I said, and I saw him wilt; 'a full pardon
for me, and you have these bonds.'

"He practically knew what I was going to say, but I had no sooner
finished than he leaned forward and said:

"'You'll have the pardon, and the pardon will be sent to Johnson. Does
Johnson know where the bonds are?' he asked easily.

"I looked in his eye for five minutes and then I looked at my
finger-nails.

"'Trumps,' said I. 'Try again, Senator.'

"The political bug No. 1 gulped a little 'By God!' under his breath.

"'You don't think it's a square deal?' shouted the Senator.

"'It is--on my side,' I said.

"'Very well,' said the Senator. 'I tell you what. Johnson will be
brought here to-morrow. You will be brought here. You will have your
pardons. A posse will accompany you wherever you wish.'

"'And then?' says I.

"'Then you and Johnson are free.'

"'How many are in this posse?' I asked.

"'Call it eight,' said he.

"'Four apiece,' said I.

"The Senator leant across the table.

"'Damn you,' said he, 'it's a wonder you didn't say six to you and two
to Johnson.'

"I only looked at him--I was considering.

"'We armed?' I asked.

"He sat back again.

"'No!' he said.

"Then there was another long pause. I knew what it meant. I shook my
head. He tapped on his table and said:

"'Mr. Apache Kid, we were talking about horse selling. You are the kind
of man that when you want a hundred dollars for a horse you say a
hundred. I'm the kind of man that when I want a hundred I don't say a
hundred and fifty--I say a hundred and twenty-five; and when the other
man says "I give you a hundred," I change my mind. I say: "Call it a
hundred and fifteen." Now that's me.'

"'It's a very common type,' I said.

"He got right up then. He looked as if he wanted to yell at me. But he
didn't yell. He did what is worse. He put his forefinger on the table
and pressed it down hard.

"'Mr. Apache Kid,' he said, 'I'm open to consider one alteration, and
one only, and not for all the bonds of all the governments do I budge.
When a man tries to make a deal too close there is always another way
out.'

"'Yes,' said I. 'When some dealer or another kept cornering wheat, the
Government stepped in, if I remember rightly, and lowered the tax on
wheat from the Argentine and Canada.'

"I was having a dig at him. It was a mistake. He took it another way.

"'Yes,' he said, 'there are some individuals tougher even than
Government.'

"He opened his sealed parchment.

"'I've been sent down to settle this,' he said. 'You don't like the size
of the posse--is that it?'

"'The size of the posse would be all right,' I said, 'if I had a gun in
my hand.'

"'Well,' he said, 'that's out of the question. Government wouldn't stand
for that, would it? I tell you what. Two troopers, and to hell with
Johnson. A pardon for you.'

"I was going to shake my head when he said: 'You called that horse down
to a hundred. I've said a hundred and fifteen.'

"'What about if I happen to refuse--just theoretically,' I said.

"'If you happen to refuse,' he said, 'I go back to Washington and report
that you have destroyed the bonds, that your brain is touched, and that
you have some crazy idea, common to deranged minds, to create a
sensation--and Apache Kid is forgotten, wiped out. Speaking
theoretically, that is.'

"There was another long pause. I could see myself going to the State
Asylum instead of to the penitentiary.

"'You never come down to the hundred on that horse, do you?' I asked.

"'I've come down now,' he said. 'I'm at the hundred.'

"I sat and felt cold. I remembered some little tricks that Johnson had
played on me.

"'All right,' I said. 'Two troopers and a gun----'

"'No,' he said, 'two troopers!'

"'Two troopers,' said I, 'a full pardon, and then we walk down to the
dept, board a train, and four days after you have the bonds.'

"'It will take that long?' asked the Senator thoughtfully, and his
little eyes jumped at me.

"I think he was beginning to think that after all he might have tried
some other method, pumped me as to where the bonds were."

We were still at a standstill, Apache yarning on, and I looked over my
shoulder, suddenly wondering if the troopers might not be following us.

"They won't follow now. Besides, there's a buzzard on that hill we've
just come over; they'd raise it coming up. Two days later I got the
pardon. You saw the end of that business. But I ought to have held out
till I got my feet on the table and a pardon for Johnson too. And two
troopers," he said. "Two troopers!" he yelled vigorously. "By heck! Now
that I think of it I was a confounded fool; I should have killed these
two men."

He wheeled his pony, which I recognised as the same white mount I had
hired from the Colonel at Black Kettle, evidently hired for this trip
too, wheeled madly, plunging the spurs in its flanks, and tightly
grasping the gun appropriated from the trooper, he sped away in the back
track.

Around I wheeled, determined to prevent this daring "bad man" who had
saved my life six weeks ago (and won a pardon for himself with such
tenacity that I could not but admire him) from committing a hot-blooded
murder. He would be hunted to the death if he did that.

The ragged-winged bird shot up from the crest behind us, where it had
alighted, shot up as we dashed back, an ugly bird with a bald head.
There was just it sweeping up into the sky, and Apache spurring down the
slope on which we had halted, down it and up the other side of the dip
at terrific speed, his horse going at a maddened gait, all a gathering
together and swinging apart of nervous legs and flying of sand.

And then over the crest--two men--against the sky line--topping the
rise, sweeping down to meet him, then suddenly aware of him and
wheeling. He rode back with such speed that he was nearly up their
length already--and he saw their blue uniforms. They dismounted as quick
as light, and both were down on a knee, and both fired. The darting
light of the fires flashed, the reports burst. Apache fell from his
horse and rolled wildly down hill into the scrub in the bottoms.

I don't know whether they thought he and I had parted company and that
he had been coming back to trail them--as they had been, after all,
following him. But in their excitement, in his dash up hill to them, in
their exultation as he rolled bumping down that hill, and his horse ran
round excited, plunging, they gave a simultaneous whoop.

One leapt to his feet and, heedless of his horse, dashed down hill after
the body. The other ran to his horse, it also plunging, caught the
bridle, and swung to the saddle, then rode down hill. I was a pretty
person to go after Apache, counselling not killing of these men in hot
blood! And they were pretty specimens to take his in cold blood!

I gave a yell--thinking, of course, that they were after his pardon,
intent on filching that from the corpse before they left it--gave a
whoop of 'No, you don't!' and dug my heels into my pony's flanks, and
with a great snort he took the hill, nearly somersaulted, then stiffened
his legs and away we slid down.

Round whirled the first trooper--he who was on foot--and down he went on
a knee to aim at me, careful and steady--and "puff!" came a whirl of
smoke from the bushes in the bottoms, disconcerting my eye. The trooper
lurched forward on his gun and, as he fell, it cracked aimlessly.

The other trooper, the mounted one, was trying to take aim at me, but
his pony danced at the sound of the firing. He threw off his horse to
fire at me from the off-side, clutching the bridle in an intention to
wheel the horse between us; but it wheeled too far and, brushing aside
that gulping, nameless something in me that nearly made me yell, and
gritting my teeth, I reined up abruptly, brought down my gun--and got
him right. We fired almost simultaneously--and he fell.

Then out of the scrub, where he had cunningly rolled for shelter, apt as
an Indian in the strategy of such affairs, came the Apache Kid.




CHAPTER IX

ALIAS BILL


A very sane and rational person would have let Apache Kid go, would have
considered that he was too dangerous to make a friend. A
measure-for-measure person might have argued: "He saved my life the
other day; now I have saved his. Now let him go--he is not a 'safe'
friend."

But what could I do with such a man?

He rose from the scrub, and the first thing he said after he had caught
his horse was: "Hi! Hi! My friend! First thing before I thank you, I
want to tell you right here that I killed both these sons of ---- and
you have to get that impressed on your mind."

I am no killer. That one shot in self-defence is as much as I wish ever
to fire. It has satisfied me. I was bemused with the incident, now that
the two men lay dead, and the sky and hills looked quietly on, and the
two horses snuffed herbage on the slope.

"But I----" I began.

"Pshaw!" he said. "Can't you bluff yourself? I can assure you that if I
get up against it and am taxed with killing these men I shall say:
'Where are your witnesses?' and if you chip in and say you finished one
I shall chip in and say: 'Don't you listen to him. He's bug-house. I
plugged them both.'" He swung to his saddle. "Theoretically I did," he
said and glared at me.

Thus it was that I became one of Apache Kid's friends, nay--an advocate,
as you shall hear. I had been full of admiration for him for the way he
had won his freedom, and now--well, he was white with me.

"You ride on your way, friend," he said. "You shake a hoof, pull out.
Nobody knows you were in this except le Bon Dieu, and he'll say nothing
this side Time. You quit--now," and he held out his hand.

"I would like to see you out of this," I said. "What are you going to
do?"

He considered the landscape, then stepped down from the saddle and moved
to where one of the troopers lay, half way down-hill between the trail
and the bottoms, levered him with his foot and sent him crashing into
the bottom brush where the other had rolled already. Then he took one of
the horses and led it down into deep scrub till the girths were touched,
and shot it so that it fell crash, as when a beast is pole-axed. The
other horse, at the shot, bolted, but only ran a few yards, for the
reins trailed--and then it stood. Apache mounted again, the easier to
catch it, and rode to it, caught the reins, and led it down
likewise--and despatched it too. Then he rode up again.

"I feel doing that!" he cried in a hoarse voice. "Well, so-long!" He
held out his hand; "And thanks! You're a white man."

And then over the crest came a rider. I looked up and saw the foreman
of the Diamond K.

He rode down to us with loose rein, raised his head, looked astonished,
and pulled up. He just gave half a nod to Apache Kid after the look of
astonishment had passed, and turned to me.

"Say," he said, "you can ride back to the ranch and take your time."

He produced a note-book and pencil.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"You ain't ridin' quick enough after Steve," he said. "That's all."

"Sure that's all?" I asked.

"It's enough, ain't it?" he said, and added: "Alias Bill."

"Oh," I said, "that's it, is it?"

"I ain't arguin'," he said. "Here is your time check. If the boss asks
what's the trouble--you didn't get a move on you quick enough, for my
taste, after them boys that was going over, in response to the X Diamond
X letter, to No. Three Creek. That's good enough I guess. You tell him
that."

I took the time check from him, tore it into little pieces and dropped
it in the sand.

"I don't want to touch the money of a ranch with a foreman like you,"
said I.

"You be careful," he said.

As we spoke we could hear a high bellowing voice, bellowing a ditty
about cows and women, and it was a slightly coarse ditty, in a somewhat
inebriated voice. And then, over the crest came the rider--saw us,
yelled, swooped down waving his hand in air. The foreman hailed him as
he came up, laughing at his condition.

"Been having a good time?"

"Yap--and goin' home again to the outfit."

The foreman looked him up and down.

"I'm looking for a good roper," he said.

"The hell you are," murmured the drunken cowboy. "Well--I guess you'll
find plenty of 'em in this State," waved his hand grandiloquently to all
of us, and jogged away.

Apache urged his horse on at that. I followed. A little devil in me saw
that it was an auspicious time for leaving the foreman, just after
having viewed this ignominious response to his offer of a job. I don't
say a little angel in me. I quite acknowledge it was a little devil.

Apache looked over his shoulder.

"Why are you not straight?" he called to the foreman. "Why don't you ask
a man to come and work for you instead of looking him up and down and
telling him you're wanting men? I suppose you'll go around now and tell
people that you doubt if Yuma Bill is as good a roper as he's cracked up
to be! And why didn't you tell this gentleman what the real trouble
was?"

"It's been my policy," said the foreman, "not to look for trouble.
There's enough trouble without looking for it."

"Oh well," said Apache Kid. "There's room for all kinds in the world.
But it's my opinion that your way of trying to dodge trouble leads to
more trouble in the end than if you were to be outspoken. Look at the
case of me for instance. You haven't asked what I'm doing here? No--you
ain't looking for trouble. Good! But first thing you do is to proclaim
that you saw me here. You think I've broken gaol somehow, but you won't
say so. You ain't looking for trouble. But first thing you'll do is to
find out about me and see if there's a reward for information about my
whereabouts." He put his hand inside his jacket and produced a blue
envelope. "See--to save you trouble--read that," and he held out a long
parchment with a red seal at the end of it and the red letters "This is
to Certify!" at the top, and several "Whereases" down the side.

"I don't want to see it," said the foreman. "I want nothing to do with
your business, Apache Kid."

"You've got to see this," said Apache grimly, and rode back.

Fully expecting more trouble I trailed after him and halted at his
heels. The foreman looked stonily at the parchment.

"Well--is that enough?" he said. "I ain't interested."

"Good!" said Apache Kid. "And you keep not interested too."

"Are you threatening?" said the foreman. "You've had a heap of trouble
already, you know."

"No--I'm advising. No, I'm not! I'm threatening. You keep not
interested--that's my advice to you," and he half wheeled again.

"Well, I'm glad to hear this, Apache," said the foreman, "I'm glad to
know of this pardon. Let me shake hands with you."

Apache looked at him.

"No thank you," he said. "If you had tried to hold me up right now, and
then I had shown you the pardon, it would have been different. I would
have shaken then, maybe. Mind! I don't say you're wrong. I may be all
wrong the way I see things; but I don't--frankly--I don't have any use
for a man like you."

The foreman looked almost like a corrected schoolboy. He seemed grieved,
pained. I could see myself forgiving him if he looked like that!

"Maybe I am too quick," said the foreman to me, and I knew that he had
seen that Apache was angered for my sake, furious at this "firing" of
me. "Say," he said, "can you explain how you happen to have two names?"

He turned to Apache.

"You must admit, Apache," he said, "that it's a suspicious circumstance
to see this gent hob-nobbing with you here and to know he should have
been down at Rattlesnake Crossing by now."

"Two names?" said Apache Kid. "You do know a lot. I don't even know one
of his names," and he laughed.

I sat there considering; and then said I: "It's a long story--too long
to tell now--and I assure you that it doesn't signify anything very far
wrong."

"Ah--you'll have to tell it," said Apache, with the trace of a jeer in
his voice. "We can't accept your assurances."

"Well," said I, and I laughed, "it's a long story; and, seeing I'm
leaving the Diamond K anyhow, I think it's not worth while. I'll take
the horse back and leave it at the ranch."

"Oh, say!" said the foreman. "Better let me make you out a fresh time
check. I'm sorry you quit like that."

"Go on," said Apache to me, "you take the time check. They would wonder
what had happened if you left so sick of the ranch that you wouldn't
have your wages and the foreman would have to explain. Help him out!"
and his lip curled.

"You're a bit hard on me, Apache Kid," said the foreman, and wrote
afresh in his pocket-book and tore out a page.

"Take it," said Apache. "It's due to you, anyhow. You're quitting the
ranch now--you're not getting fired for being in my company, or for
having two names, or for taking too long to ride wherever you were
riding."

The foreman abruptly shook his bridle and rode on.

"Well," said I to Apache, "what are you going to do?"

"I?" he said. "I'm going to Black Kettle. It has just come into my head
that this pony was hired. I've got to take him home."

"So far as that goes," said I, "he'll go home himself. He carried me up
to the Diamond K and went back alone."

"It's very kind of you to be so interested in keeping me out of Black
Kettle," said he, "but after all, why shouldn't I go back? And besides,
what should I do afoot in the hills? What are you going to do?"

"Pull this forty dollars," said I.

"And after that?" he asked.

"Oh, go back to Black Kettle," said I.

We had ridden back on the trail and come in sight of the high blazed
fir. He held out his hand.

"Well--so-long!" he said.

I took the hand and pressed it.

"Take care of yourself," I said.

"I killed two--remember," said he.

"Very well," I said. "Then I know nothing about it."

"That's right," and we wheeled and parted.

The owner of the Diamond K, Maxim, paid me in person.

"Going to quit?" he said a little astonished. "You've hardly come yet."

I did not reply.

"Been fired?" he asked.

"I don't know whether I've quit or been fired," said I.

"Oh!" he said, counting out the dollars. "Had trouble with my foreman?"

"Either that, or the foreman had trouble with me--I don't know which,"
said I.

"I am sorry," he said.

He watched me unsaddling the horse and rolling my blanket.

"Take care of yourself on the way back," he said. "Some of those steers
in the valley are liable to make hay of a man walking." And then I set
out, my face towards Black Kettle.

But half way to the tree I saw a rider coming in my direction. It was
Apache Kid.

"It just struck me you would have to walk," said he, "so I came up to
meet you. There are no trees in this stretch with branches under thirty
foot up, and I pictured you waltzing round a tree playing tag with a
steer."

But the wildness of the steers was really the other way about; those
that we came on on our tramp to Black Kettle headed away from us, with
tails in the air, the moment they sighted us. I half expected Apache to
say something when we came to what had been known, prior to the hold-up,
as "Johnson's Experimental Ranch," and, after it, as "The Hollow Fraud"
because of the newspaper headings, but I was not going to broach the
subject.

We passed in silence. A quarter of a mile past he wagged his head.

Said he: "You didn't ask me anything about the ranch when we came past."

"No," I said.

"Interested?" he asked. "Shake," he said, and we shook solemnly. "I like
your reserve," but he didn't say anything about the ranch nevertheless.
A little bunch of steers, breaking away before us, turned him on to the
subject of cattle, and he asked me if I had ever worked on a ranch
before, and hearing I had not, and what I had been doing at the Diamond
K, told me how difficult I would have found it at first to have
estimated the ages of the stock.

"These three that we raised," he said, "one was a two-year-old and the
other two were three years. It's like rolling off a log to tell them by
the teeth. Milk teeth the first year, two big teeth the second, four the
third, six the fourth, eight the fifth."

"The trouble is," said I, "cows don't always yawn at you or smile."

"Oh well," he said, "you get on to the horns. Rattle joints in a
rattlesnake's tail, rings on a cow's horns, crow's feet round a man's
eyes; with the knack of quick seeing you can tell them all."

Then abruptly he cried out: "There--you can hit Black Kettle on your
lonesome now," dug in his heels, and went off in a whirl of dust.

And when I crested the hill above Black Kettle I just saw the white spot
of the horse, and the black dot atop, drifting across the shining
thread of the railway track and gliding across to the tiny store that
showed all roof, with the merest speck of a black door peeping out from
under the eaves.




CHAPTER X

APACHE TALKS


Apache and I sat on the verandah of the splendidly-styled Palace Hotel
of Black Kettle, in the evening. It was a clear night, almost cold
already, as is the way in those parts after the hot day. The benches
were bathed in starlight. As for the stars that put their glamour over
the land--I am a little afraid to speak of them lest I be high-falutin.
Only artists in words--and astronomers--can write about such nights and
not be high-falutin. I remember recalling a phrase from Professor
Lowell's book which I had studied once for an examination, in which he
comments that even in America, thanks to the smoke of industrial towns,
one cannot see the stars, fairly, east of the Missouri.

Apache nodded to the Great Dipper.

"I once spent a summer with the Blackfeet up near Browning, Montana. The
end star of the handle of the dipper makes a circle round the North Star
once in twenty-four hours. The sky is their dial and the star its hour
hand. It's a heck of a great clock," said he meditatively, and not at
all flippantly despite the way of expressing himself.

I sat and looked on the "heck of a great clock," the clock of eternity.
I have said that I shy at talking about stars lest I be high-falutin. I
shy at loving them too well too. For I have found that as soon as I
seem to gain a period in my life when I may be at peace, something comes
along and boosts me into torture. Fate puts a charge as of dynamite into
my quiet. If I sit down to bask in grass there comes a rattlesnake. If I
sit, like Omar, considering the stars; or remember how, for Emerson,
coming out of a political meeting, the stars looked down and said:
"Well? Why so hot, little sir?"--if I come to a period in my life when I
can sit by a creek-side and allow myself to be bewitched by whorls of
water, there is always Fate stealing behind and saying: "Hands up!" and
as I do not throw up my hands tamely there is more "scrap." Like many
another cow-puncher I consider myself at times a philosopher or poet
gone wrong! And yet, perhaps, these moods that come at times are
ridiculous. I might have failed as a poet. And I see from the papers
that when a man fails as a poet he generally becomes a critic and
explains to poets how to read their verses. Better riding the
range--despite the parts of the life that I never care for much, which
the cow-puncher of to-day has to attend to and the cow-puncher of
yesterday never dreamt of doing.

I may be laughed at for saying that I am a man, by my instincts, of
peace; may be laughed at, seeing that my story is so much about
eruptions; but I save out of my life of much tempest, such times as
this: sitting at peace on the verandah of the Black Kettle Hotel,
thirty-five dollars and two bits (or a quarter) in my pocket, a prime
supper digesting under my belt, a pipe in my teeth, and the stars so
bright as to make particles of sand before the hotel glitter as if there
were frost in them, and the shadows of the hitching-poles show blue, or
indigo, in the sand.

"I think those troopers acted on their own initiative," said Apache
breaking the silence.

"Oh," said I. "You don't think they had orders?"

"No, I don't. If I had worked a pardon north of the line and been sent
off with two N.-W.M.P. men they would never have played such a trick.
They would have known that it wouldn't have helped them one little bit.
They might have found themselves in Stoney Mountain for life if they had
gone back with news that they had killed me. So, even granted a member
of that force dirty enough to try it--which I doubt, for it's a small,
picked force, and they are absolutely bug-house about being the whitest
force of police in the world--even granted one member fit to try such a
trick, he would have known it was useless for promotion. All the same I
don't mean that the U.S.A. go in for that sort of thing. Only I do mean
this--that if these two men had killed me and gone back with a yarn of
me trying to play some game on them they would have had no censure and
very probably they would have had promotion according to the story they
doubtless meant to put up--I tried to plug them. The American army is
all right. It holds some good soldiers, plenty of them--but America is
too full of the graft spirit."

The drollery of a train robber sitting in judgment on the United States,
to praise or to censure, never struck me. I listened to Apache with the
greatest interest, simply listening as it were to the expression of an
individual's views.

"I've always suspected that Sitting Bull business," said he. "I was over
at Rosebud, S.D., when it happened. The agency police went to arrest
him. Now he was a damned nuisance was old Sitting Bull. There was no
doubt that Uncle Sam would be glad to be shut of him. The agency police
went to arrest him. Did he evade arrest and let them plug him? No. He
got on his horse; but--hearken! After he started there was sign of a
rescue being attempted--so 'Biff!' and Sitting Bull is dead. These kind
of things happen a great deal--and then there's an inquiry when the
people shout for it loud enough. But the dear people, having instigated
an inquiry, are content. They guess that the inquiry is going ahead with
its inquiring. So doubtless it is--and it will, in the end, put in some
kind of report which will appear in print when nobody is interested. But
that's not the United States, my friend--that's life. That's humanity.
Doesn't an individual behave just that way with himself? Isn't that just
the way ninety-nine men out of a hundred go on dickering with evil
week-days and salving it all on Sunday--playing knucklebones with brain,
heart, conscience, and what are called primitive instincts? And
ninety-nine men out of a hundred don't know that they're playing bluff
with themselves. An honest man is up against it, and the one that comes
through to the end is a white man to love, by heck! Most men go
down--and the most of them go down bluffing. Life's all a bluffing and a
robbing and a being robbed. You can choose to be a robber or a robbed
from. It's all part of the scheme. Even Judas is in it, you'll observe."

He turned and looked at me, and his eyes had quite a mad glitter,
showing like a cat's in the star-glow.

"Quite so," he continued, "I'm bug-house! Bug-house! Crazy! But
anyhow--when it comes to stringing me up I'm not the kind to say: 'Kind
friend, be lenient, remember me with a good word, Alias Bill. I may have
stolen a bunch of horses, or held up a bank, but I once saved your
life.' Confound that! That's sheer dime novel."

"I wish," said I, "you would not talk about getting strung up."

"Hang it all, man!" he cried. "Can't you understand me? I've taken a
fancy to you. I thought you could understand me. I'm a man who simply
didn't ever have a chance. I was the robbed, all the way along, from a
kid up; and when I sat down one day and sized it up I simply quit.
Apache Kid was born out of what had gone before, and the other man
died--he was quite worn out, I assure you."

He was silent so long that I began what he had somehow reminded me of,
to tell him about my own life in Scotland, and of the reason for my
coming away.

"You heard the foreman of the Diamond K call me Alias Bill--so now
you'll understand," I said, and told him of the name Williams, how I
took the first name that came into my head.

"I know," he said.

I finished my story, telling it to him just as you know it, and he said:

"There you are! What kind of show did you have? Of course you might have
stayed at home. It must gall you--that lurcher not being dead!" He
stopped and snorted. "Oh, but you're sane!" he cried with a chuckle.
"You're sane!"

He too was sane next minute.

"I'm going out of all this starlight," he said. "That kind of glimmer
makes me talk wild. Anyhow--I've got friends in Black Kettle."

When the cold drove me in later I found Apache Kid telling, to the
proprietor and two cow-punchers, the story of how he got his pardon.

One of the boys laughed and said:

"You're open enough about it, anyhow."

"Well," said Apache Kid, and returned a roguish smile, "I've been tried
and found guilty and pardoned, haven't I?"

He merely pulled out the pardon and thrust it in again and of course
they did not ask to see it. If he wanted to show it--good. If he wanted
only to wave it and pocket it again--good.

I don't for a moment think that either of the cow-punchers had the
slightest intention to emulate Apache Kid; but they relished his talk. I
suppose they picked out what was fine and daring and manly, and kept a
mental reservation for themselves, had a little headshake by themselves,
afterwards. A man like Apache Kid found the hearts of these men much as
a Deadwood Dick novel finds the heart of a healthy boy. Only the
unhealthy will go and try to be Deadwood Dick too--and fail.

A voice came from a corner and I turned to find that the old
store-keeper was sitting at a side-table, over a glass.

"You know what it is, Apache Kid. If you do it again--mark you, I don't
say you've done it before--if you do it again and keep on doing it
you're going to stop a heap of lead one day."

The two young men looked round at the voice, looked very feelingly back
at Apache Kid and then said, in duet: "That's what!"

"And you can't blame 'em, Apache, for all your clever talk. You're the
smartest bad man I ever see--and I came into this country in '49, mark
ye! You're the prettiest bad man I ever see, and when an old man like me
says he wouldn't mind having a boy like you it means a heap."

Apache's mouth dropped, and I saw his eyes suddenly fill and the two
cow-punchers said: "That's what!" in quiet voices.

"But mark you, Apache Kid, hoomanity is so built that if road-agents
wasn't stopped with lead they'd be nothing but road-agents. It's
something like this yere Socialistic talk about state support for this
kind of man, and for that kind of man, and the next kind. A little bit
of stretching and who, I ask, is going to pay in to the state bank to
support them that's drawing out of it? There's going to be a kick
coming."

I don't know if the Colonel's logic was sound in expression, but I think
it was good inside his old head.

He rose and retired.

"The Colonel," said the hotel proprietor, "is bug-house about these
political ideas. He's been reading a bunch of English papers that Scotty
brought over to him from the dept, and he rings state support into
every subject he talks about--but----"

"He's all right in the main," I said.

"That's what!" said the cow-punchers, looking still sadly upon the
swaggering Apache.

"Come now," said Apache, laughing, "you're all ag'in' me."

None of us had noted that the Colonel had paused in the doorway, before
leaving, and had heard all this. He shuffled his feet.

"No, we ain't," he said. "We're all for you, sir. There's just one kink
in your head, like a thorn under the saddle, and if you could only pull
that out there would be peace."

I wondered if he meant for the rider or the horse. Doubtless so did
Apache; but it would have been unfair to have pressed the Colonel's
metaphors too far, as a dialectician does when his opponent's views are
sound but the metaphors faulty. Even the warped (if he was warped)
Apache Kid knew that the old man spoke wisely and from his heart, and
from a big experience.

"Thank you, Colonel," he said.

"I'm afraid that's all that will ever be to it," said the Colonel. "I
had a young kid come in one morning and asks for a job. I gave him it
too, round about the store. He owned up that he had been hoboing and
beating the country on the cyars--but he wanted to settle down and work
for a living. All right--I gave him a chance. Then one day I sees him
run like hell over to the dept when a train comes in. He rubber-necks
at the train and comes back. 'What you rubber-necking at the train for?'
says I. 'Mother come West for her lost boy?' He laughs, and says he: 'It
was a new kind of cyar they had on and I was looking to see what kind of
perch the rods underneath would make.'--'Perch!' says I. 'I thought you
had quit hoboing and beating your way.'--'I'd like to try that new cyar,
uncle,' he says. He called me uncle. A week later he disappears. Where
had he gone? Then I took a tumble and over I goes and asks Scotty: 'Say,
was there a curious new cyar went through to-day?'--'Sure,' he says,
'there was.' That's all."

We laughed, and the Colonel shuffled off.




CHAPTER XI

BUCK JOHNSON


Doubtless you know that whimsical feeling, if not of proprietorship in a
place, of belonging to it. On this return to Black Kettle, when I came
down to breakfast in the morning, I found myself wearing quite the air
of an old inhabitant--of being a citizen of Black Kettle. The railway
meant less to me. I had seen a little way into the country beyond--and I
was known. True, of cattle I knew just about as much as Apache Kid had
told me as we returned. The cowboy's life had been for me, so far,
grooming horses, splitting wood, mucking stables and mixing flour. I
could at least say: "I have worked with the Diamond K outfit," if I
could not say: "I've been riding the range for the Diamond K outfit";
and here I was in from the ranch, back in Black Kettle.

The charm of new countries, for the pilgrim, is that he feels himself
very much playing a part in them. It is all so new to him that, looking
round on all things, he stands outside himself and sees himself too, in
the new setting.

Biting a toothpick, in the fashion of Black Kettle, I sat in the hotel
sitting-room, content, with the dollars from the Diamond K hardly
touched. I was so much an "old resident" that when the "westbound" came
in I did not trouble to go and look out. I was in the position to size
up, quietly, any one that might drop off the train.

I wandered, instead, over to the Colonel's store and strayed round
there, considering various interesting objects: saddles with
silver-mounted pommels; saddle ropes; saddle blankets; chaps, of leather
plain; of leather fringed; of sheep-skin with the hair outside. The
Colonel paid no heed. He never stepped forward and rubbed his hands and
said: "What can I do for you?" He had the air of taking it for granted
that one always came into his store simply to look round and blow smoke
up into the low rafters.

I considered that when I got my next job I would buy a pair of chaps. As
it was I had had to stitch, laboriously, a seat of leather into my
ordinary pants.

The Colonel, using his pursed lips for a pen-rack, was fussing
deliberately with accounts.

I saw a curiously patterned blanket among a heap at the end of the
counter.

"What kind of blanket is this?" I asked.

The Colonel looked up, looked at the blanket over his uneven spectacles,
which he always put on (to look at a paper or an account) with an air of
being unfamiliar with them.

"Navajo blanket," he said; "a twenty-dollar one."

"Oh! A Navajo blanket! I've heard of them," I said. "Is this then a
genuine Indian-woven one?"

He looked blankly at me.

"A twenty-dollar one," he repeated, more deeply.

The Colonel was going to rob me of that sense of being an old
inhabitant. I could feel that. Evidently the fact of saying it was a
twenty-dollar one was tantamount to saying it was not an original
Navajo. There is one trait in my character that I never condone. It is,
to me, quite disgusting. I kick myself badly for possessing it, and one
of these days I'm going to cut it out, destroy it. This trait: it is a
way of trying to look as if I know things that I don't know. It has made
me not know things sometimes; for a man has begun about something and
said: "You know?" and I have nodded my fool's head and said: "Oh
yes,"--and he has simply said no more at all, instead of going on and
letting me gather the facts of which I was ignorant. Many people are
like that.

"Oh! Twenty dollars you said," said I, as if I had thought he had said
"ninety." That is the strategic way of one with that absurd trait in his
nature--such as I have.

He looked at me again blankly.

"Yes, that's what I said," said he.

These quiet old men do make a greenhorn, when he is just beginning to
play-act to himself that he is in the swim, feel he is a greenhorn
indeed--and so I retired. But I was to astonish the Colonel later, that
very evening, and show him that, after all, it does not follow that
because a man is not posted on Navajo blankets he does not know a Colt
from a Derringer, a 44 Winchester from a Sharpes.

I walked back to the hotel. The train had evidently dropped some human
freight. There was a stranger (to me at least) on the verandah. That was
enough to make me think of Apache Kid.

"What does Apache keep staying around for?" I thought, for I had seen
him, after breakfast, showing no sign of departing. "Sooner or later
those two troopers are going to be hunted for--when they don't return."

I considered, however, that the newcomer might be the original founder
of the place, who was just looking in again on it, and not a first,
solitary sleuth, come gently and blandly to Black Kettle to make
inquiries about the troopers. I did not, at any rate, advance on him and
welcome him to Black Kettle and invite him to a drink as Black Kettle
was lonely to a stranger. The Navajo blanket incident had stuck in my
mind. I left such hospitality to others.

I went into the bar-room and sat down to wait for dinner, hungry
already! I sat meditatively and stared at the blank face of the
nickel-in-the-slot hurdy-gurdy. And presently Apache Kid came in from
the sitting-room and sat down beside me.

The man outside had looked in once or twice already, while I sat there
alone, and now he looked in again, rose, entered and walked over to us.

"How do you do, Apache?" he said.

"How do," said Apache. "What are you drinking?"

"I don't know that I am drinking," said the man.

"Sit down then," said Apache, "and get your trouble off your chest. I've
been expecting you."

I looked from one to the other. There was a grimness in the air.

"Expecting me?"

"Sure," said Apache.

"Friend of yours?" asked the man, indicating me, and sitting down
heavily; he was a heavy man, heavy-handed, heavy-browed; heavy
cheek-boned; heavy-mouthed with a moustache like walrus tusks.

"Yes," said Apache. "Let me introduce you--Buck Johnson--Alias Bill."

"How do, Alias, pleased to meet you."

"How do, Mr. Johnson?" said I.

"Er--could I have a word with you, Apache?" said Buck Johnson and pulled
his long moustaches.

"Right here," said Apache. "I have no secrets from my friend, Alias
Bill."

"Oh!" said Johnson, and raised and lowered his brows, and nodded, and
darted a quick, slanting glance at me again. Apache, I hasten to say,
did not mean to drag me into his troubles. This was just his easy,
insouciant, cheeky way.

"Well--I guess everybody knows," said Buck Johnson; "the papers don't
say--but everybody knows."

"Knows what?" thought I. He shot a glance at me again and I looked at
the table.

"And I came along over to see you," he went on to Apache. "I want to
know why my brother ain't setting here in Black Kettle along of you."

"Yes," said Apache, "it's quite an understandable question. From anybody
but Jake Johnson's brother it would be a question too much; but from
Jake Johnson's brother it shows a fine brotherly spirit--and a genuine
spirit of that kind is a thing I admire."

"There ain't no need to butter me about it. But I'm glad you take it
that way; for I bin feelin' mighty bad about it; and I feels--" he
paused and he looked heavy indeed; "I bin feelin' I want an explanation,
bin feelin' as between brother and brother, and man and man, an
explanation's reasonably expected."

"Sure!" said Apache, but at the phrase "between man and man" our eyes
met.

"Well sir," he said to Johnson. "I fought the Governor first--and then I
fought Judge Radford, and then I rode no less a man than Senator Davis.
I rode him as you might say on a hackamore. If he'd been bitted I'd have
got your brother out too."

"Well, why in thunder didn't you, Apache Kid? You was both in the
trouble. Couldn't you both pull out on the same deal?"

"I tried it," said Apache. "It was my fault. I set out determined to do
it; and we played a few games--Government and I. The Governor set in
first and I just looked at his hand--and he quit. Then Judge Radford sat
in to the table, and he dropped out. Then came Senator Davis."

"Yes, I know. He is the railway."

"He is the railway pretty nearly, as you say; and he's the roof of the
White House too, you might add."

"Yes? I ain't disputing it must have been an all-fired tough game."

"It was. I've kicked myself a bit. I set out to win; but I didn't know
the game was to be so tight. I knew it was going to be tight--but I
didn't know just how tight. In the last deal I had a good hand too. I
had three queens and I reckoned that was enough; but the Senator had
four aces."

"I know--the table was strange to you, and the cards was a new pack in
your hands, and you hadn't ever played a Senator before--but I see three
queens was somehow strong enough to get you off against his four aces.
Why in heck didn't it get off Jake too?"

He paused, and then with the air of an inquisitor he said: "He wasn't in
the pot, Apache, he wasn't in the pot. That's what it is."

"He was in the pot all right," said Apache.

"Well, he didn't come out," said Buck Johnson.

"No--and this is why: now I talk quite straight to you. Another man
might consider that we each should have put up our own game. We didn't.
Jake had not the savvy to put up such a game. So I did. And, as I
say--wait a minute--" for Buck Johnson was about to interrupt--"I put it
up for both--and I won every deal but the last; but it's the last that
counts when you're playing all your belongings, down to your saddle. I
was right up to the place where we were both to get a pardon, and then
come out and take some men to where the bonds were, and say: 'There ye
are, boys, and good-bye.' I was right up to there. But what was the
posse to be?" He paused for Johnson to see the position, to let it soak
in. "I said two troopers--he said eight. I considered and said: 'Make it
eight men picked by me, just ordinary citizens that will see the thing
through.'--'No,' he said. 'Eight troopers or nothing.'"

"Pshaw!" said Johnson. "I wonder you didn't think of that before you sat
in to the game."

"I'd point out," said Apache, "with all respect for your brotherly
love," and he smiled, "for all your solicitous interest in Jake, that he
didn't even think out a game at all."

"Um! Still you was both in for the thing, and you should both ha' come
out."

"Well--I'm not very patient, and I'm explaining to you--because I
appreciate the brotherly spirit."

Buck Johnson was bulging his lips.

"And the last deal?" he asked.

"That was the last deal. It was just this--'Take it, or leave it. We
don't play again--we've played the last game, and you and Johnson leave
here with eight troopers--that's your guard. The Government is very easy
about this--but the Government can't run the chance of the scandal of
two armed train robbers moving about like that. If you don't like it so
I tell you what I'll do. I'll make it two troopers, and you
alone.'--which would you have accepted, Buck Johnson?"

Apache put his hands on the table and glared at Johnson.

"You! You'd never have tried to get your brother off," he said.

Down went Johnson's arm--and Apache's darted across the table and he
caught Johnson's wrist.

"I'm not armed now, Buck Johnson," he said, clutching the wrist; "and
Black Kettle is pretty free, but if you pull on me when I have no gun--!
Besides--Buck Johnson--" they were wrestling across the table, Apache
still gripping Buck's wrist, "--besides, Buck Johnson, if I was out of
it where would you get any one to tell you where the dough was hid?
You're not the man--" Johnson ceased to struggle--"you're not the man to
force me to show you the dough--not to force me--as I forced the
Government to show me a pardon. And what you really want is a share of
that wad."

He sat back. The bar-tender leant on the counter, staring, watching
intently.

"Now you're talking," said Buck Johnson.

"Of course the other way is for me to keep Jake's share till he gets
out," said Apache.

Buck gave an ugly laugh.

"He'd be an old man then," he said.

"And ready to retire," said Apache, and laughed back at Buck. "Now, Mr.
Johnson. I've explained all that I think you are entitled to know,
and----"

"Dinner's ready, gents. Come in and eat," came the proprietor's voice.

Dinner was eaten in silence and after it was through Apache rose.

"Going up for a lazy siesta," he said. "I feel tired."

Johnson sat glaring after him; then, ignoring me, he rose and marched
into the bar-room and called for a drink.

I sat there considering that I liked Johnson not at all. If his brother,
Jake Johnson, were anything like him he would be much more what I
thought the typical hold-up man than was Apache Kid. Not but what Apache
Kid was a very unusual man--and with a streak of something almost crazy
at times in his composition.

Ah Sing came in to clear away the last dishes, so I passed to the
bar-room.

I had another look at Johnson. He was drinking, and thinking, leaning
heavily against the bar. He half turned and glanced at me.

You know that feeling of being aware when a man is thinking of offering
you a drink, weighing up the chances of being able to pump you? I felt
that then, and so I decided to move away and settle Johnson's argument
with himself as to whether I was open to be useful to him by absenting
myself. I rose abruptly and marched off.

Then it struck me that there was going to be bad trouble for Apache Kid.

"I'll go up and advise him to go off to-day," thought I. "How long will
they give these troopers? How long will they defer a search for them? It
is at Black Kettle that inquiries will first be made. Apache will be
found here, and arrested, to begin with--till they are heard of."

I went upstairs. I found Apache's room and knocked.

"Come!" he called and I walked in and was confronted with a revolver!

He was lying down on the bed, fully dressed.

"Wasn't sure of the step," he said, lowering the gun. "Sit down.
Cigarettes?" He tossed tobacco bag and papers to me.

I sat down on the one chair and rolled a cigarette.

"Have you thought," said I, "that it is only a few hours' journey from
Fort Lincoln to here--and that, at any time, troopers may arrive?"

He lay looking at me, an arm supporting his head as well as the pillow,
which he had pulled from under the coverlet.

"I told them we would take nearly a week," he said. "There's plenty of
time. I was waiting to see how many spongers would want me. I have four
days yet in Black Kettle to receive personal enemies."

"Oh, yes--of course," I said. I rose, blowing smoke.

"Look here," he said, and he spoke very quietly. "Remember--I killed
them both. But, seeing you are so much interested in me taking care of
my neck, you could do me a heck of a favour."

"What is it?" I asked.

"To take a packet for me up to Mrs. Johnson."

"Where?"

"At Johnson's ranch."

"Mrs. Johnson! There's no one there."

"Yes there is. She is back there again now. She only left on the day of
the hold-up because Johnson told her and she would have nothing to do
with it. But she's back now. You see, legally, she can sit in that
ranch-shack for four months yet. The place was rented--for an
experimental farm, money paid down too--for six months. She's back there
by now."

"But she didn't come by Black Kettle. How do you know?"

"Well, I'm willing to bet she is there anyhow," said Apache. "She'll be
longing for some news. And she knows me a little bit. And she knows that
I know no other place, bar one, where she might be. And as she has
friends at the other place I expect she's up at the ranch--so as to have
both houses open to me in case I have anything to communicate."

I considered.

"And are others not likely to watch for you at these places?" I was
really thinking of his safety--not of my own in the chance of me going
up to the ranch as he wanted. His quick look made me add: "Oh, of
course, you can't go up yourself."

"Yes--but so long as I stay here Buck Johnson stays here too. You can
take a horse and so for a little passear, and he will think nothing. I'm
here--that's all he'll think of. He's going to watch my movements."

"I'll go," said I.

"Good!" said he.

And I don't think that it was just a memory of the help he had given me
at the Dago gang that made me eager to help him.




CHAPTER XII

JAKE'S WIFE


Mrs. Johnson was a large, hard-looking woman, or perhaps I had better
say strong-looking woman, with kind eyes. She must have been a very
resolute woman to live alone here--that is, judging her from the
standards of the Old Country. I had ceased to judge men from these
standards, but she was the first woman round Black Kettle with whom I
had come in contact, and I think my first thought on coming in sight of
the ranch--with the afternoon shadow of the great fir-tree opposite it
running across the waggon-road, up the wall, and resting on the
roof--and seeing her pass round the gable and then look up, hearing me,
was that she was a very resolute woman indeed.

Of course, it was hardly to be expected that Jake Johnson was the kind
of man to marry a timid little mouse. When I saw that tall, square
figure fold its arms and stand rigid at the gable-end I decided that I
was to meet a virago.

A dog plunged out of the ranch and came baying towards us and I heard
the woman's voice calling it back. It was a homely kind of voice and
caused me to pull up and doff my hat in an open frame of mind.

"Good-day, ma'am," I said, reining up.

"Good-day, stranger," said she.

"Are you Mrs. Johnson?" I asked.

"That is my name, young man," said she.

I passed the little packet to her and said I:

"The Apache Kid sent me to you with this."

Her face lit, and then she frowned. She held the parcel and looked at
it, and turned it over, seemed undecided. Suddenly she looked up at me
and said:

"Do you know the contents of this parcel, young man?"

"I do, ma'am," said I.

"Friend of Apache's?" she asked.

"Well," said I, "considering that Apache practically saved my life a
week or two ago I do not suppose I am an enemy."

"Very well put," said she. "I see you're a white boy. You'd better tie
your horse up and come in and drink tea before you go back. And say,
young man, you can put your hat on again."

I slipped off the white horse who lowered his head to exchange, I
presume, some greeting of what we call the "lower animals" with the
mongrel dog. They exchanged breaths, and I followed Mrs. Johnson into
the shack.

A black tea-pot stood on the stove, the veritable black tea-pot that had
invited Pete in here so short a time ago, and yet it seemed ages ago. So
much had happened since he and I passed here; it all flashed through me
as I followed Mrs. Johnson--the swirling arrival of Apache and Jake
Johnson, the recognition, the departure, the bucking wood and mixing
flour and reading the garish accounts of the hold-up, the queer position
of the "John Williams or William Barclay" incident, the pleasure of
being ordered on "the range," the flutter of the incident of the hollow
tree, the strained talk with the foreman of the Diamond K, the
thoughtful mien of the Diamond K owner, the kind of flurry that had
filled my heart during the last two or three hours, the sense of
unreality, to one but recently come from class-rooms, and lectures, and
policemen regulating traffic at the corners.

A tap, tap, tap gave me a little jump and brought me back to Johnson's
ranch and the knowledge that a woodpecker was at work in some tree near
by.

"So you're the young man that worked with the Dago push on the railway,"
said Mrs. Johnson. "There's some folk would think the less of you for
that, but I ain't one of them. A young man, green from the Old Country,
who can hold down a job like that--he's got the real thing in him. Have
I to open this parcel?"

"Perhaps you'd better," said I, "in case there might be an answer."

"Just in a minute," she said, took a dipper from a bucket, filled the
kettle and put it on the stove. Then she undid the packet and out rolled
wads of bills and gold coins all over the table.

"For the land's sake!" she cried, sat down on the stool and fell into
thought.

"There's a note in the bag," I said.

She fumbled and drew it out.

"Read it me," she said, "I ain't got my glasses."

I unfolded the paper and read: "Jake Johnson's share," and put the
paper down on the table.

Suddenly she got up.

"Well," she said heavily, "every nickel of that goes in the bank. I told
Jake what--I told him that if he kept on at these kind of things I
wouldn't touch a nickel of it. There's wives would leave a man for the
like of this. I told him that if he went through with that hold-up I
would go down into Montezuma and start a laundry. I reckon Montezuma
would rally to a white woman and let the chink go somewheres else. It's
real white, this of Apache--that's the worst of it. A woman like me
that's seen a lot sees all that side of it too. I was a nurse in the
Civil War, I was. Man is queer. When you come right up against that kind
of thing, men screamin' and swearin' and dyin', and men not lettin'
themselves scream and swear, and askin' you to write letters to their
folks and all that, it shows you right inside. I was never the same
after the war. I got a different idea of men. I got to see men more like
a man sees them--good and bad--don't seem to matter much so long as a
man is white. Apache Kid, he's white, and my man, Jake Johnson, he's
white too. Do you like it strong or weak?"

"Not too strong."

"Not too strong," she said, "no. Well, Kid, you take an old woman's
advice--you keep on the rails. Here's this Apache Kid now--I've bin
swearin' at him these last few days, and now he plays up white. Well, I
take back all I bin saying. I was through the war, you see, and a woman
who's bin a nurse through the war, she gets a different view of things.
If Apache's white to my husband he's white to me. Maybe I don't like my
husband's ways, maybe I threaten to leave him, and I reckon I would have
left him too--and you don't find no other man come cavortin' 'round me.
That's his affair and mine, and this here hold-up, that was Jake
Johnson's and Apache Kid's."

She sat and looked at the money--at the heap of gold and paper.

"Where did you see them after the hold-up?" she asked.

It suddenly dawned upon me that she did not understand.

"I've come from Apache just now," I said.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Apache's out," I said.

"Out!" she cried. "Escaped?"

"No," said I, "he's pardoned."

"Pardoned! And Jake?" She had poured out the tea. "I got to sit down,"
she said. "You tell me about it," she said.

"Well," said I, "there were some Government bonds in that train and
after the hold-up they put them in a hollow tree. Now, Apache saw that
he could not use these bonds as a lever before the trial, or at the
trial; the country would have to know all about the trial. He waited
until they were sentenced and then he asked to see the Governor, and the
Governor sent for him."

"For the land's sake!"

"And then Apache said: 'Now you want these bonds; I know where they are;
you will have them if you give me a full pardon.'"

"For himself?" broke in Mrs. Johnson.

"For both," I said.

She leapt up and cried out: "Then Jake's a-comin'? You're a-breakin' it
to me? This here's a surprise party?"

"I would to God it was," I said; for the affection of this hard, kind
woman, who had been through the war and had her outlook changed, who
looked like a woman in her prime but who must have been on the threshold
of age, touched me very deeply. "If you will compose yourself," I said,
"----"

"Compose myself!" she cried. "And me through the war when you was in
long clothes! The way you men do go on! Women that don't know men all
says that every man is a child to a woman. You tell me your story, young
man."

The voice was very hard, and I said:

"Believe me, Apache Kid did his best to get Jake off--Mr. Johnson I
mean."

"Well," said she, "I ain't decided yet that he didn't. But you tell me
and I'll see what I think myself."

So I told her the whole story, she interjecting little exclamations as I
told, now concentrating her brows, very thoughtful, anon nodding her
head and keeping up the nod, nodding. After I finished she sat frowning.
She was chewing the cud of the story. Then she rose, pushed the money
altogether into one heap.

"Apache Kid did his best," she said quietly, and then suddenly the dog
gave voice outside. Mrs. Johnson started, I ran to the door and the
first thing that struck me was that the white horse had gone.

"Where's the horse?" I cried.

"There he is--in the bottoms," said she, just as I caught sight of his
white head raised among the long grass of the bottoms and his ears
pricked to the sound of the dog's voice.

Mrs. Johnson thrust me suddenly back into the shack.

"You go in there," she said and pointed to the little rear room,
curtained off by two hanging blankets. Scarcely had I entered and
dropped the curtains behind me than I heard a subdued chink of gold. She
had only time to push it to the back of the table beside the wall and
throw her apron over it when a horseman pulled up at the door and the
dog barked afresh, and a man's voice hailed: "You there, Mrs. Johnson?"

"Come right in," called Mrs. Johnson. "I ain't got no matches."

"Good-evening ma'am, no more have I. Want a light for the lamp? Allow
me, ma'am," and he opened the door of the stove. "Got a piece of paper."

Peeping through, as it was safe to do, the shack being now so much in
shadow, I saw her take up Apache's note and twist it into a spill which
she handed to the newcomer. He lit the lamp. I saw the glow striking up
on his heavy face, the long moustaches making him look like a walrus. He
turned up the wick as the mist cleared in the funnel.

"Just come up to see how you were getting on, Mrs. Johnson," he said
suavely. "It's the least a brother-in-law can do."

Mrs. Johnson snorted.

"Well, it's real good of you, Buck," she said, "but I don't think I
stand in need of any consolation. You see, I bin through the war; and a
woman that's bin through the war gets a different view of things and I
ain't askin' for no sympathy."

"That's a good way to take it," said Buck Johnson.

"It's my way anyhow," said Mrs. Johnson easily.

He sat quiet for a long time.

"Ain't you going to be sociable?" he said.

I think she had sat down to some sewing, by the sound. Said she:

"Did any one know you was coming up here?"

"Why sure," he said. "I says to the proprietor of the hotel: 'Well,' I
says, 'I'm goin' up to Mrs. Johnson. She's liable to be wantin' somebody
up there, and train robbery or no train robbery,' says I, 'it's the
least a brother-in-law can do. I'll go up,' I says. 'She might want a
man to stop with her over-night. It's a kind of lonesome place.'"

There was another long pause. I could hear the faint sound of Mrs.
Johnson's stitching. Also the dog gave a growl.

"You can go right back, Buck Johnson," said she, "and tell the
pro-prietor of the hotel that Mrs. Johnson said: 'Thank you kindly for
comin' up, but she'd rather be alone. It's a gossipy country and there's
no Buck Johnsons coming around to take care of a lonesome woman!' Do you
hear me, Buck Johnson?"

And then I heard a long, low whistle from Buck Johnson.

"Oh!" he said. "He's been and gone has he, then?"

I heard his quick step across the floor and the sound of his hand
crushing a bunch of bills. The dog, roving round the room, sniffed at
the blanket curtains, wondering why I hid there.

"I'll just take a handful of these, Mrs. Johnson," said Buck Johnson.

I slipped my gun from the holster and stepped right out.

"Put up your hands, Buck Johnson!" I called. I was absolutely alert, and
calm, and saw my whole plan of campaign.

"If you move," said I, "I fire." I stepped more close to him. "I'm going
to take your gun off you."

"Don't you!" he said.

"Don't you move," I said quickly. I took his gun, I undid the buckle of
his cartridge belt, and I put both on the table.

"Now, Mrs. Johnson," said I, "Mr. Buck Johnson was so solicitous on
your behalf that he left you his gun and his cartridge belt. Do you
think you could get my horse, Mrs. Johnson?" I added.

"I guess I could," she said, and passed out.

"All right," said Buck Johnson to me, sourly, "you have it on me this
time."

"I have," said I.

"I'll have it on you one day," he said. "And you won't get off easy."

"You're tempting providence," said I. "Better not discuss this affair
any more."

"I've got him!" came Mrs. Johnson's voice from outside.

"Thank you," I called, "we're coming. Now then, Mr. Johnson, step out!"

He marched to the door.

"Now," said I, "you're going to mount, and you're going to ride a length
ahead of me; and if you make it two lengths," I went on determinedly,
"my gun goes full cock. And if you make it three----" said I.

"His name's Dennis," put in Mrs. Johnson, "and I don't blame ye. Don't
you trouble to raise your hat, sir; and my compliments to the
pro-prietor of the hotel."

And so we mounted and rode off from the "Hollow Fraud."




CHAPTER XIII

THE TWO TROOPERS


The scene, when we came to Black Kettle, was laid in such a way as to
appeal to Buck Johnson.

The Eastbound was just drawing into the station, slowing up, the bell
clanging.

Johnson evidently decided that he would rather not have me tell the
Apache Kid, while he was "in town," what had happened at Mrs. Johnson's
shack. When we gained the metals at the crossing he slipped from his
horse, gave it a thump on the haunch, and ran helter-skelter to the
platform, a black shadow in the blue night.

Very well--if he wished to go he could. Knowing Apache Kid somewhat by
now I decided that it was a good way out--otherwise Apache might get
into more trouble; for, if Apache heard from me of the affair at the
ranch, there would be trouble between the two,--and Apache had probably
found out by now that Johnson had not stayed on in the bar-room.

I reined up and saw Johnson board the train and then I rode wildly on to
the Colonel's. The old man was at his stable door, opening it for the
horse Johnson had ridden.

"Back again?" he said.

"Back again," said I.

"You didn't see the gent that had this horse, did you?"

He was looking up at me keenly. I suppose it is what you would call
chivalry that came up in me then. I remembered what Mrs. Johnson had
said about gossip. I never thought that Buck Johnson had not told the
hotel proprietor where he was going when he hired the horse to follow
me, remembered only that he had said that he had done so.

"Colonel," said I, "if you are interested, I can tell you a whole lot
about the man that rode that horse."

He looked more sharply.

"You haven't killed him, have you?" he asked.

I thought again that he had wind of the story in some way--but I was
wrong, as I found out later.

"He's just gone out on the Eastbound," said I.

"Oh!" said the Colonel. "You saw him?"

"I waited to see him board her."

"You did?" thoughtfully.

"I did."

"Did you see where he came from?"

"I did. He came from Jake Johnson's ranch, in front of me all the way.
And I want to tell you, the oldest inhabitant of Black Kettle--whose
word goes here, as they say--that if you hear any story about Buck
Johnson having gone up to the ranch and stayed there to protect Mrs.
Johnson, it's all lies. I suppose he told you that was what he was up
to?"

"He told me nothing. He just hired a hoss for the afternoon and
evening. You met him you say?"

"I had to carry a message to Mrs. Jake Johnson, I brought Mr. Buck
Johnson back into Black Kettle in front of my gun and he elected to take
the train. I didn't stop him. I thought it better not."

"Say," said the Colonel, leading in the white pony, I having dismounted,
"Black Kettle seems to be getting to be a storm-centre. I think you know
a heap; but I think you'd better keep tight holt of it till you're more
posted up on what's been happening in Black Kettle since you've been
away these few hours."

"What has happened?" I cried. It struck me that perhaps Apache and
Johnson had fought, after all, when I went off. "What has happened?" I
cried.

"Two dead troopers brought in on a waggon from the old trail this side
of the Diamond K."

"Oh!" I said.

"And they're the two troopers that went out with a man you're becomin'
tolerably friendly with. And he's lit out."

"He's gone?"

"He's gone. Now, young man, you've got some tall thinking to do; and be
thankful you didn't get more friendly than you did with that gent. He's
a man I admire; but he's a whole jag of danger to a bosom friend."

He closed the door and seemed by his manner to signify that the talk had
finished.

"You come to me, young man, if you see a square deal of a way out; but
you want to go around and have a look at the play before you take a
hand. It ain't fair to let you buck into a game like this with the idea
that the table lies just the way you left it."

"Thank you, Colonel," I said, and crossed to the hotel with a great deal
in my mind to consider, and a certain trepidation.

There was no one in the hotel. A hushed air reigned supreme in the
bar-room. The barman sat at a table, writing arduously, with a bad pen,
and tongue going in and out in time with the pen's scratching. The
proprietor looked sharply at me when I entered the room, and the tone of
his "good-night, sir," was reserved.

I asked no questions. I merely awaited developments.

Supper-time came, Scotty's supper-hour came, but Scotty did not arrive.
At the meal--and I was the only supperer--what I wanted for supper was
all that the proprietor seemed to be interested in. I might have been a
new arrival. I thought that perhaps I was about to be tabooed; but I did
not know the proprietor. This was no taboo. He simply was not going to
talk--for my own sake too. Black Kettle was as desolate as on the night
I first struck that deceptive "city." The nickel-in-the-slot machine
stared with blank face on the winking leaden spittoon; the stars looked
under the eaves; the dim lamp-light shone outward and cast an orange
slab on the verandah. With a queer feeling of being on the edge of a
volcano, waiting for bad news, a sense of suspense, I sat in the dim-lit
sitting-room; then I passed to the dim-lit bar-room; then to the
verandah; then back to the bar. I did not want to go over to the dept.
I knew that the troopers lay there.

The troopers were brought in on a waggon, so much the Colonel had told
me. But who had brought them in? What had been said? What had been done?
I had plenty of questions to ask, but I asked none, and barman and
proprietor evaded me. Perhaps to-morrow would speak, of its own account.
I went to bed, with my gun under my pillow, and slept, being quite
tired.

I ate a lone breakfast. The proprietor was mute. Scotty came over for
his breakfast and merely nodded his head to me, snapped "Morning!" and
sat down to eat, morose and wolfish. He was really too excited to speak
at all this time.

Then there came (after breakfast, when I stood on the verandah asking
myself what my plan of campaign was to be), trudging down the benches, a
man packing blankets and looking as if he swore--whose shape I knew. It
was my old friend Panamint Pete of the Diamond K.

"Hallo, Pete!" I hailed, as he marched up to the "Palace."

I could have fallen into his arms. This mute Black Kettle was telling on
me.

"Hallo, Bill!" and he flung his blanket roll down and came up the steps
and pump-handled me. "Still here?" he said.

"Still here," I said. "But I'm getting sick of being idle. Do you know
of any jobs?"

"Looking for one myself," he said.

"Quit?" I asked.

"Sure! I can't stand that foreman. What are you drinking? Let me stand.
I got my time with me."

We passed into the bar and liquidated. Then, plump and straight to the
point, I asked the barman, unable to stand any more silence, whether
patience and reticence were advisable or not: "Do you know what's become
of the Apache Kid? What happened last night?"

He shook his head slowly.

"And I don't want to know," he said. "That Apache Kid is all right. As a
man I got no kick against him. I never saw him any other than a white
man; but he's a storm-centre. Yesterday afternoon, just after you rides
up the benches, two dead troopers comes down here on a waggon from the
Circle Z--wonder you didn't meet them," and he looked at me, as I
thought suspiciously. "They goes aboard a freight passing through" (so I
was wrong in thinking they were at the dept) "and now I ain't
interested. I don't want to hear anything more. There's things I am
interested in. There's boys I don't want to know no more about. Them two
troopers is of that brand. I ain't got no use for them. They was the two
troopers who went up in the hills with Apache Kid. Now--what I say--it
stands to reason he didn't shoot them like that. He had just got out of
trouble. He wasn't looking for fresh trouble. There's a heap of
questions goin' to be asked in Black Kettle mighty soon--and--I said
enough. I'm trainin' for silence--no savvy, that's my motto right now."

"Just you tell me this," said I. "Did Apache have a gun when he went out
with the troopers? I wasn't around then you know. I was at the Diamond
K."

"Gun? A gun? Say! I don't think he had! No--by heck, he hadn't! I'll
swear he hadn't--but I don't want nothing to do with that case. Apache
should have stayed on here. Them two troopers brought in on the waggon
sent him off. He should have stayed on here and proved himself
innocent."

"Not necessarily," said I. "He may have had business in Black Kettle and
just finished it."

"What kind of business could he finish so sudden--that he was right
there on the dept when the waggon came down and when Scotty turned to
look at him he had plumb evaporated."

"Oh--it was like that?"

"It was like that. You mark my word, there's going to be inquiries in
Black Kettle, and Black Kettle is going to get a name for a hot burg.
You pulls out maybe about two o'clock. Ten minutes after, Buck Johnson
pulls out. Apache comes down about an hour after. He asks for you----"

"For me?" I cried.

The barman looked a little amazed at me, or curious.

"For you," he said. "I tells him I see you ride over to the
benches--guessed you had gone back to the Diamond K. 'Oh yes,' he says.
Then he says: 'See friend Johnson around?'--'No,' I says, 'I ain't seen
him around for some time. May-be he's at the dept.' He strolls over to
the dept and as he goes over the waggon comes down. Scotty gets plumb
excited. Scotty suggests sending 'em--that's the two corpses--to
Lincoln, on first freight. In comes the freight right then and Scotty
and the teamster look sidewise for Apache Kid--and he has plumb
evaporated. Train pulls out. Now I'm quit. I've said all I'm goin' to
say."

In bounded Scotty. I thought it was some fresh turn of Apache's affairs
that brought him hither. But no. He was mute about Apache still.

"Hallo, you boys! Want a job?" he cried.

We turned about.

"I do," said I.

"If horses is its name," said Pete, "I'm open."

"Well--Henry has wired to me to see if I can send him up some men."

"Henry? Oh! That's for round-up."

"Who's Henry?" I asked.

"Henry and Stell," said Pete.

"Yes, I've heard of them."

"Well he's wired to say that if I hear of any men looking for a job
he's sending in a waggon for some stuff--and to send them out to him.
There you are, boys."

"Have something on me," said Pete and nodded his head to the bar.

"No--no--no! Excuse me this time, Pete. I want to keep on the
water-waggon. If I take one glass I might take two--and then I talk."

"Oh, pshaw," said Pete. "Can't you get off once and jest wag the whip?"

"No--nothing--You'll excuse me," said Scotty.

"What in hell! You scared you blab something in your wild
moments--something of your wild past?" asked Pete.

"I say, Scotty," said I, "can I have a word with you?"

He looked at me and then shook his head.

"You go to Henry's and get to work," he said and dived out of the hotel.

"Bug-house!" said Pete. "Time he was on the water-waggon."

Then suddenly: "Say," he said and startled me as if he had fired his
gun. "Did you see that there pardon of Apache's?"

"I did," said I.

Another long pause.

"You cast your eye over it?"

"Yes, I read it."

"It was straight goods?"

"What do you mean?"

"It wasn't a bluff of Apache's?"

"No, it was no bluff. It was a genuine pardon."

"Well, you wouldn't be fooled. You're a college man. You were satisfied
about that pardon?"

"I was, absolutely. But I tell you what I wasn't satisfied about?"

"Oh! What was that?"

"Well, the pardon was all right, but it was a tall story----"

"The pardon makes the story true, don't it? If you believe the pardon
you believe the whole story."

"It's not that. These bonds were wanted very badly. Good, give him a
pardon, get the bonds, and then--" I left it in air.

"Government wouldn't play a game like that."

"That's what even Apache Kid was not sure of," I fired off at him.

"I had better tell the story," said I and I told him, as lightly as I
could, the whole affair of the hollow tree just as you know it.

"Say, this is a curious story," said Pete when I had ended. "But it has
the brand of truth to any man who knows the curious ways of life----"

"Well," I said, "you know it all now."

"One thing I settle anyhow," he said, "and that is that I don't throw no
lariat in this contest. I lay off and look on. I see all the various
possible moves, but I says right now that the game is a crooked game to
begin. It begins with a hold-up. There you are! When a game is crooked I
reckon the turn of the cards is crooked too."

After a long pause (in which he had been considering the whole affair,
and my part in it, and Apache's determination to be responsible for
both, which had brought from Pete a cry of "That was a white man--but
only right!"), he extended his hand.

"This here hold-up," he said, "ain't no or'nary hold-up. This here
hold-up is an almighty business--and I want to shake your hand. As a
friend of civilisation you was plumb wrong. But as a gent and a man you
was white, and I want to shake. But don't you tell everybody."

"I've told no one else," I said.

"So far as that goes you ain't told me," he said.

He gave my hand another pressure--and then we discussed Henry and
Stells, otherwise known as "The Triangle," because of its brand, or "The
Pueblo Wall," because of the remains of what was regarded as an old
Pueblo beside it. That subject waned and his mind reverted again to
Apache Kid; abruptly he turned to me and asked me to repeat the story of
the hollow tree; and interjected many questions regarding details. When
I ended, said he:

"Now remember Apache Kid's words: 'You didn't shoot anybody.' He shot
them both. They're goin' to get Apache sure--and there ain't no sense in
swingin' with him only because you happened to be on the trail that day,
and because you was friendly enough to chip in on that deal the way any
gent would do. No, sir. Don't you forget, there ain't a gent from Idaho
to Arizona would say you killed one of them troopers. When a marshal
shoots a hold-up man he ain't a murderer, but the State is dispensing
justice. Well, when you shoots that trooper you was only preventing him
from committing a murder. You ponder on that and get it fixed proper in
you--no hair-brand--but plumb well in. And don't you go trying to help
Apache with evidence, for you'll be cross-questioned. You want from now
on to have only heard of Apache Kid casual--and be very little
interested in him."

Good advice, but----




CHAPTER XIV

COW-SENSE


It was riotous--and dirty--work.

Always fond of horses, at the Triangle ranch I grew to love one or two.

I know it is the fashion to say that the cow-puncher is dead. But he is
not. True he does not trail herds now from Texas to Dodge City; also he
pays more heed to his stock nowadays in the way of breeding; also he
puts up at least a little hay for some animals. Yet he is not dead. It
was not only at the Triangle that I decided the cow-puncher was not
dead--later (as I shall tell) I had ample proof that he was not.

Cattle-ranching on the old-time scale is, of course, only to be found
now in Mexico. They say that General Terrazas, the Mexican cattle king,
owns a million head of cattle. But I fear it will be little use for the
cow-puncher of these States, when sheep have finally ousted him, to hit
the trail for Durango and strike the boss (El Padron) in Chihuahua and
Sonora; for the vaquero draws but a few dollars a month and is always
"in the hole," tied to his store-bill.

At the Triangle, at any rate, I learned to love a horse. I remember well
the one that, at four of the morning, my first morning at the Pueblo
Wall, I selected from the saddle bunch. He stood on his hind legs and
pawed the air as soon as I got my rope over his neck. Perhaps he
thought, seeing that I cast the rope a good dozen times before I
attained my end, that I was as poor a seat on a saddle as a hand with a
rope.

It was, at the moment, all very fine to remember how Catlin, in his
_North American Indians_, tells of the Cheyenne Indians lassoing wild
horses, tightening the noose, and then coming closer and closer to the
horse, still tightening the noose, and at last getting the lassoed
horse's head down and "taking its breath." It reads as possible. I quite
believe that the Cheyennes did the trick. A cat or dog will smell a
man's breath to gain an understanding of him. A horse may very well know
that a man is friendly, although he is half throttling it, by smelling
his breath. But I decided that I was not built after the pattern of the
Cheyenne Indians of Catlin's day. I merely hung on, dodged him when he
came down, hung on again; two men came to my aid then and we threw the
brute and saddled him where he lay kicking on the ground. Then I
straddled him, all of a tremble with the struggle--as excited as he.
Then a yell--and up he rose--up we rose. But that was the worst of him.

It was another horse, on another occasion, one who let me saddle him as
if he was a rocking-horse, who unseated me! He hung his head and looked
round and watched me saddling in the most lugubrious fashion; so
dejected did he seem to be that I determined to practise roping and thus
be able to pick what horse I fancied instead of taking what horse came
nearest. But he was bluffing and smiling at me. As soon as I was on his
back he trotted forward, still bluffing, and then suddenly bucked the
glorious buck that flung me over his head and under the lowest bar of
the corral. I spent that first day in doing nothing else but riding
these two horses. I christened the first Submissive and the second
Meek--and sat in a bucket at supper-time, to the intense delight of the
outfit.

"Pete's partner is sure an original gent," I heard one say.

But the trick was not mine. My Quixote-loving father had told me (when I
rode a donkey once in Arran, without a saddle--which, for discomfort, is
like riding a cottage roof in an earthquake) that he had lived in the
saddle by day when first he went to Venezuela--that was before his
Chilian days--and sat in a bucket to his meals, and slept on his face!

But the incident gave me a new name. I was "Bucket Bill" thereafter, so
far as the Triangle was concerned. An unfortunate nick-name it was to
become, when later I struck a saloon with the boys, for it gave
strangers the impression that I drank neither from glass nor bottle but
from--a bucket.

Cowboys, in the old days, obtained more wages than sheep-herders.
Sheep-herders, indeed, very often obtained a bullet. But now, when the
sheep-herder has his caravan and can run a home around with him, on
wheels, and has sixty dollars a month, the cowboy has only forty. I
have heard folk say that the fact that there are still plenty of men to
ride the range shows that the old romance of the riding calls, and
twenty dollars more a month does not, as they say, cut any ice.

But, though there is something in that I think it is not all. Miners
say: "As crazy as a prospector"; but cowboys say: "As crazy as a
sheep-herder." And plenty of men fight shy of the sheep-herder's lonely
life: "Baa! Baa! Baa!" from morning to night, and nothing but the hills,
and the sky; and the clouds coming up, and going over, and going down;
and the sun going up and going down--and the great dipper circling
round, and Sirius a blue flame, and Mars a red, and nothing else but
little winds, and silence, and sniff-sniff-sniffing of sheep. It is not
every man who can hold down a sheep-herder's job.

The cow-puncher's life is different. A man may be alone for hours; but
he is hunting cattle, yelling to them, following them--to meet another
man with another bunch. And then there is the dinner, all together,
about noon; after that, work all together; and then at night there is
the company--the rise and fall of cigarette glow around the fire, the
cans of tea that is like nectar, the beans, and flap-jacks that are fit
for kings--eaten in company. People condemn solitary drinking. But
solitary eating is enough to drive a man to solitary drinking.

At the Triangle, as at any ranch, there were discomforts. You do not
ride up hill and down dale from four of the morning till noon, driving
cattle, without getting hot, nor do you get hot without sweat; you do
not work in, or around, the corrals, without more sweat. A round-up
outfit knows the meaning of "the dust and heat of the day."

There were representatives from half the ranches in the State, although
the Triangle practically conducted its own round-up, its herds numbering
well over the forty thousand.

One day I would be sent out on a near reach and be in before noon.
Another day I would be on the farther circles, and proud too of it, and
come in late, drop off my horse and seize a tin plate with the best of
them--but mighty happy and "feeling good" if the bunch I had added to
the day-herd was a worthy one.

Tea! Tea has been my tipple ever since these days. It has never been the
same tea, but I drink it nevertheless. I remember one night as I took up
the pan of tea, feeling so "good" and happy, recalling a phrase of
Heraclitus, and I spilt some of that nectar on the ground before
drinking, and looked up at the stars. My shirt was sticking to my
shoulder blades and I was cold after the day's work, but I poured a
libation to the Gods--all on my lonesome there.

There was a funny little pang the moment after (one gets sentimental too
on the range); the pang was at the thought that I was quite alone in the
camp--that "Bucket spilt his tea," if any noticed at all; I doubt if
any did. Certainly, that Bucket was worshipping, none would know.
Perhaps all worship should be like that; and the worship that has most
flummery and pomp and circumstance, and takes place at stated times and
hours, and to stereotyped words, is not worship at all, but a kind of
attempt at a bluff on God.

The fearfully, quiet, reserved, thoughtful impenetrable boss of my
waggon gave me my first congratulation that night, the night of the
libation.

"You're breaking in well, Bucket. You never rode the range before, did
you? What was you doing at the Diamond K? Cook's bitch?" and he smiled,
or his grey eyes did, in the fire-light.

I nodded and laughed.

"I mind a man in Oregon," he said, "called himself an engineer. The
engineer on the stern wheeler was sick and he got the job. He got us up
all right, with a hundred and forty-five pounds of steam, and her
certified for eighty; and when we were squattering in to Columbia
Landing he comes up on deck and asks for his wages. 'Anything wrong?'
asks the Captain.--'Why,' he says, 'I've got up this length, but I've
had enough. I never seen a stern-wheeler in my life before--'--'Ain't
you a engineer?' says the Captain.--'Well,' says he, 'I stoked a lifting
crane in Portland, Oregon, for one day, loading wheat. But this gauge on
this here boat puzzles me.'"

My waggon boss laughed and turned away and I went, perfectly contented,
to help myself from the Dutch oven. But my head was not swelled. I knew
that after the round-up was over there would come other work when I
would be expected to do more than sit a horse.

I confess that by now I was forgetting home, and the face of my mother
was fading further from me. In the Dago railway gang I was never free of
it--it haunted me in a most heart-rending way--for when what is done
cannot be undone one would not forget the loved--and yet to remember is
anguish. When I read, at Black Kettle, of the hobo's recovery at the
Western Infirmary, I kicked myself; and the misery I suffered at the
Diamond K, because of feeling the utter lack of any necessity for ever
having fled from Glasgow and broken my mother's heart, tortured me.

Here I began to relish life again--sadder and wiser, and often
philosophising that I would never again tangle myself up with
mortality--with other lives. I was feeling miserable still, but I fear
that, in contrast with the recent agony, I was almost happy.

Thinking that all that was necessary to make life perfect was a bath in
the evening, and a suggestion to some of the boys not to pick their
teeth with a fork--both changes absurd to hope for--I fell asleep under
the stars; the saddle, smelling of horse, for my pillow; a grey blanket
round me like a cocoon; and so--I fell asleep.

Some time in the night I wakened and saw the stars, and far off, in the
valley, a deeper darkness of the herd; and, sitting statuesque across
the dip, on a ridge, one of the night-herders.

Then asleep again--and I wakened abruptly in grey haze to the cry:

"Tumble out, you sons of guns! Tumble out!"

The oven was the only brightness, the cook working before it, with
illumined face and hands. A scent of wet sage would be in the air, wet
sage, and coffee, and biscuits. Out of the wonderful mystery of haze,
before the day would come, came the herd of ponies with the "horse
ranglers"--and another day's work was open before us--and another day
had dawned on the great Dry Belt.

To you it is not as to me--you are waiting for the Apache Kid. I had
nearly forgotten him in writing of these first range days. He was, of
course, discussed about the fire, but as often as not his name only led
on to some tale of another brigand, train-robber, hold-up man; or some
horse-thief, brand-faker; or townsmen (for I was not the only man at the
Triangle who had begun life in a city) would tell of some cracksman.

These townsmen interested me, but not so much as the men who had been at
the life all their days: they drifted to the range for this or the other
reason, mostly for love of space, and chance to waggle an elbow without
jostling some one--other reasons, too, doubtless, moved some, to judge
by their expressions. There were one or two who looked mighty tough and
talked little.

Pete, knowing what would be coming anon, gave me many a wrinkle. When we
had the opportunity, as once or twice when he rode in with me during the
days of "circle riding," he would tell me the ages of some animals, and
then let me state what ages I believed others to be.

"Your waggon foreman," said he, "is pretty good to you. Shouldn't be
surprised if he would allocate you a cow-pony one of these days and put
you off that tarnation lonesome holding the herd, put you to do some
cutting out--but he's struck on you and he'll allocate you a pony that
will do half the work for you. Some folk try to scare men off the range
by telling them none but an expert can lasso. No others need apply, they
says. You wait and you'll see. Half the lasso-throwing ain't throwing at
all. You get a good cow-pony and he'll see where you're heading and
carry you there, through a hull herd. Then you just drops your lariat
over the horns and the pony walks out. It's all right. He'll come."

I feel that I must interject a comment here that an old cow-puncher was
speaking; and these are not my sentiments. Pete, with a long enough
rope, could lasso the moon I believe. He was always the kind of man to
make light of his work, and also he was an encouraging man, perhaps
because he was successful himself at his work. I have noticed in all
professions and callings that the bluffers, they who are really
incompetent and hold their jobs by bluff, are generally the ones to
advise a beginner to go back to where he came from.

"Well," said I, "I suppose I've to report to the boss that a cow with
the Triangle brand got away from me to-day."

"What was that for?"

"Well--you know how they all start going, heads down, tails up, as soon
as they hear you yell--the long-horns I mean. All you have to do is to
ride along the tops of the buttes?"

"Yes, that's right--with long-horns; different from them ---- Suffolks
and Surreys and Jerseys."

"Yes, you can run them down two gulches at once if they're Texans, just
by coming from one side to the other and whooping----"

"Sure! But where does the eloping cow come in that you mentioned in last
week's number?"

"Oh! She ain't calved yet," I said. "I'm coming to her."

Pete wagged his head, appreciating, hardly smiled, and remarked:

"You're learning the cattle industry, sure thing. You're getting
repartee, and you'll be a credit yet to the Pueblo Wall. Well, what
about the curious cow?"

"Oh, she was up on the top and I came quite close to her, and drove her
a bit. She didn't run."

"I see. She was lonesome--not with a bunch."

"That's right. She was on top. I had to drive her and drive her, a cow,
Pete, a cow--drove her and drove her, and then she turned bang round and
charged me. This pony just jumped."

"Sure thing. Wiser than you."

"And when we dodged she charged again. The pony wanted to run----"

"Didn't you take his advice?"

"Why no! I got back again at her. The end of it was that we dodged her
again, and the pony slipped on the edge--and we did a somersault."

"A somerset?"

"Yes. It's a wonder I didn't get my neck broken."

"It is, sure. You want to go down to Mexico City and be a Toreador--Oh
Toreador! and stick rosettes in the bulls and get bookays from the
seoritas. Well, go on--I'm interested. It's only this invigorating air
making me pert."

"I rolled to the bottom after the somersault and the pony came down to
meet me--and I left her--I left that--cow, because when I got up again
farther along I found that the bunch in the next gulch had turned and
was straying away back again."

Pete smiled and considered.

"It's a wonder to me," he said, "that a man like you, self-educated in
cows, so to speak, enough to run two bunches that a-way, with crossing
from one to the other, didn't have the savvy to leave that cross-grained
cow alone."

"I did."

"Yes, eventooaly. But you needed a tumble first, and had to see, with
your own eyes, the ninety and nine a-straying. You didn't ever go to
Sunday school, if you did go to co--" He stopped, for joshing is
joshing, but it is not considered according to Hoyle to chip a man too
much about being a college man. There are men on the range, as
everywhere, who announce that they are "college men"--but the real
"college man" don't like too much "college man" slung at them.

"You want to learn by sad experience," he ended.

"Well, what about the cow?" I asked.

"Oh, you can mention her if you like, but I wouldn't mention your
draw-poker game with her--not unless you want to be amusing."

"I never thought a cow would behave like that," I cried, wheeling aside
to gather in a steer that was trying to lead away a little section of
the herd, and riding back again.

"Only cows will, my son," said Pete, paternally, when I rode to his side
again, "at least generally speaking. A bull will argue it with you right
there, sometimes, but when a cow gets that way--argumentative--leave
her--to hell with her--she'll come in at the next round-up--or she'll go
into another round-up and be cut out and drove where she belongs; or
she'll think it over and follow on later when she gets lonesome. Never
argue with a woman, my son."

It was late on the night of the day of these lessons when a screaming of
wheels announced the arrival of another waggon into the plain from the
home ranch.

The steers rose--they had already settled--and the clicking of horns
began again. We tumbled out (we who had already loosened belts and
boots) and caught what ponies we could, and rode over to help the
herders, riding round and round the herd till the outsiders, that were
trying to break away, milled again and lay down with many grunts.

Then we came circumspectly back--no whooping it up, with a night herd of
that size and nervousness; left them with a thought like that in the old
song:

    _Lay nicely low cattle,
    Don't heed any rattle,
    But quietly doss till the dawn.
    For if you skedaddle We'll jump in the saddle,
    And head you as sure as you're born._

We left the herders singing to the herd, and drove quietly back to camp,
the herders' voices following us, fading, mellowing with distance, dying
away--to find a cluster standing at the fire--an excited group, around
the new arrival, glimpses of fire darting between their legs, lighting
up the undersides of their faces, giving a wild, almost eerie look, to
the camp.

I really think it is such pictures that constitute half the lure of the
round-up camps to-day, even as yesterday.

As I dismounted and unsaddled, I heard, from the crowd:

"Well, I'm sorry for Apache Kid. I ain't got no use for hold-ups, no
more'n for horse-stealers--but he ain't no or'nary low-down horse-thief.
I was working at Colonel Nye's when he went out after that there lost
cabin that I guess you all hears of; I heerd all that story, and I heerd
how he was suspected of two hold-ups but got off. Reckon he was
guilty----"

I became irritated at the long-windedness. I passed over to the group.

"Well, he's up against it now," I heard. "They're going to fill him full
of lead this time."




CHAPTER XV

AG'IN THE GOVERNMENT


Side on to the camp-fire stood a teamster reading out the news about
Apache Kid. I do not remember the exact words of that latest published
information regarding the train-robber; I did not keep copies of the
newspapers, but they went something like this--and were thus read by the
teamster:

"The worthy train-robber or 'hold-up' man, who rejoices in the--rejoices
in the--in the--(Oh to hell!) of 'Apache Kid,' has leapt again suddenly
to the fore-front in the public eye. Only the other day he was safely
ensco--ensco--(Oh to hell! Another long word!)----"

"Ensconced," prompted a man who sat nursing his knees by the fire and
looking up on the reader, listening with open mouth and some contempt.

The teamster yelped: "Am I reading this ---- paper or are you?"

My waggon-boss poured oil on the troubled waters.

"That's all right. Don't you interrupt," he said. "Do you think you
could read it any better?"

The corrector quailed at this implied threat, dreading a request to give
an exhibition of his power to read a newspaper more accurately.

"I don't say that," he fired off.

"Well, go on," to the teamster; and then to the corrector: "There's
college gents here, content to listen without correcting. And if a
college gent can get the savvy without interruption I reckon there ain't
no call for any gent to correct." To the teamster again: "You go on,
sir; you're doing very well."

Thus appeased, the teamster continued. It was a queer story that he
read. It would appear, according to the newspaper version, that the
gaolers had brought some pressure to bear upon Apache Kid; but what
manner of pressure was not stated. There was a clever suggestion, which
the reader could take or leave, that gentle torture had been perhaps
employed, or maybe threatened! At any rate, Apache Kid had gone out,
under some compulsion, with two troopers, to show them where certain
valuable stolen property had been hidden. And now they were dead--and he
was wanted. A reward of one thousand dollars was offered for the
capture, alive or dead, of Apache Kid.

"Oh!" cried out one; "but there's something behind all this. You ain't
bin to Black Kettle recent or you would know. Apache Kid was in Black
Kettle. Now, he must ha' bin in Black Kettle after shootin' up the two
troopers. Scotty, the brass-pounder, over at Black Kettle--the agent--he
says Apache went out with them all right. They came down there all on
the jump, in a special train, with their own horses, and Apache rides a
horse that Scotty went across to the livery stable and got for him.
Then Apache went up to the hills with them. Next thing he comes back."

"Alone?" asked somebody; and I waited for the reply from this man who
had the real news to add to the newspaper news.

"Yap, alone;" he said. "Scotty says that he asks the Apache Kid about
the troopers, and Apache says as how they had hit the trail over to Lone
Tree instead of coming back to Black Kettle--fearing celebrations there.
But Apache Kid had a pardon for the hold-up all right," he fired off as
a final crusher.

"A pardon!"

"A pardon?"

"Sure thing. Everybody in Black Kettle heerd of that. He had a pardon
for the hold-up, a full pardon, on consideration that he would show
where these here Government properties was cached. Now--Apache ain't
goin' to shoot up the men that come with him to git that property--and
him with a pardon in his pocket."

My heart gave a series of clutches. I felt like one about to take a
plunge on a chill day.

"Did any one see this here pardon?" asked the boss.

Something told me to be silent; and then everything went hazy; and with
a feeling of being unwise and yet, somehow, right, I stepped forward.

"Sure!" cried Pete. "He waved that pardon about considerable," and he
thrust me back, and shook his head at me.

"Did any man read it?" asked the boss.

"I did," said I, and came clear into the cluster, which fell apart. Pete
let out a long, great sigh and stood back.

"And more than that--I saw the shooting of the two troopers," I
continued. Pete fell back with a hopeless toss of his head and gesture
of his arm.

It was a thunderbolt for them.

I had decided to talk; and I told them the whole story, all except the
part of it relating to my journey to Mrs. Johnson with her husband's
share of the hold-up takings. I told them all about my shooting of one
of the troopers, and what Apache had said on that head. At that point I
knew, by the cries of admiration, that they were Apache's friends.

"And now, gentlemen," I ended. "What I want to know is--where do I come
into this? If Apache is captured have I to give myself up and tell the
story as I've told you?"

The boss stared.

"What!" he yelled.

The crowd circled closer. There was an odour of singeing trousers and
scorched sheep-skin leggings. They forgot the fire in their eagerness.

"Well," said I, "I'm a witness to the thing--to tell how they tried to
kill him. But I shot one of the men."

"Say," said the boss, "if you do anything so foolish we'll put you under
restraint, we will. What do you say, boys?"

"Sure!"

"Sure!"

"Sure! We'll cache you where you'll not be heerd of till Apache has
played his game."

"Sure! Apache is playing a lone hand from now on. You just stepped in
where he was liable to loose, and says you: 'These gents have got their
cyards stacked,' and you gave him a fresh chance. But he plays a lone
hand all the same."

"Sure! He'd have passed in his checks then if you had not stepped in.
Now--just you leave off chipping in. He's the kind of man any gent is
liable to help, but he is dangerous as a friend. He's a road-agent and
train-robber; and when you chips in with him as a man, you are sure
preparing for getting locked up later as a brother road-agent. You leave
it to somebody else to save him again----"

"Ain't you a white man?" a gruff voice demanded of me, and one of our
toughest hands--an old timer, with mahogany face, and heavy tusks of
moustaches that looked cream-colour against his bronze--gripped my
shoulder.

"Well--I want to be," I said.

"Pshaw!" he growled. "Just you be. A crooked man may want to be white;
but a white man, if he goes around splitting hairs to be white, is going
to get plumb pallid and ghost-like."

"That's right, and put like an expert orator," said Pete. And then to
me: "I tried to keep you from talking at all to begin with, if only you
could have seen."

"Oh!" said the waggon-boss, "I saw you signalling; so I knew he had some
card in reserve for play when it was wanted. Well, my son, and college
gent, I'm glad you showed us that card before you played it, for now we
threaten you that if you show any signs of going into the game we are
sure going to put you under restraint. Ain't that right, boys?"

It made my eyes haze a second to hear the unanimous: "Sure thing!" and
to see the faces (that I am sure, in the mass, would have terrified a
New York, or Boston, drawing-room), bronzed and blackened, and with the
fire-light playing tricks on them, all turned on me determinedly.

There was not a man there who would make a bid for the thousand dollars
offered for the arrest of Apache Kid. But they were determined to keep
me out of his story, considering that I had gone just deep enough to
rescue, but that if I went deeper I might drown with him.




CHAPTER XVI

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT


The life and adventures of the Apache Kid were not to interfere with the
work on the range.

I did my share in the exciting and dirty work of cutting out; and
sometimes was told off to lend a hand at the branding during the
succeeding days.

I think the foreman was giving me a chance to learn all there was "to
it," as he would say. The old timer I have mentioned remarked to me
once, in a lull:

"Which I don't know what wages you're gettin', my son, but you are sure
ropin' in experience."

Pete's expectation was fulfilled. I had cow-ponies to work with, during
cutting out, that were all "experts." In the herd I found no
recalcitrant cows; steers might fight there, clash horns together,
create dust and circlings, move to the outside, and be turned back by
the herd guards. Now and then a thoughtful cow would walk deliberately
from the herd, a string following her, but they would all crowd back
again, as soon as one of us headed them off.

The cutting was in full progress--steer cut, and cow and calf cut. My
job, one day, was to look only for the Triangle brand on cows. The calf
would be by the cow's side, bewildered and clinging. Then all I had to
do was to drop the lariat over the mother's horns and start out. What
fascinated me was the way the pony would note, firstly, what cow I had
selected, and then, secondly, when my lariat fell--and start edging out
of the herd before either knee or bridle had prompted him.

Another day I was told off to assist two men from a neighbouring ranch
in the work of cutting out the cattle bearing their brand that had
strayed amidst our herds. Again, I was told off to join a branding crew;
and I think I was looked upon with a certain measure of pride (instead
of with annoyance as an interloper) wherever I went, looked upon so not
for myself, but because of my connection with the affair of Apache Kid
who was now making our section famous--or notorious.

There was also a certain air, among the boys, of watching me, as if they
feared I might stampede, stricken by some sudden mad idea to throw in my
lot with the fortunes of the Apache Kid. But I saw by then, quite
clearly, that it would do no good for me to make any public confession.
Apache had killed one trooper anyhow. It was his trouble. The arguments
of the outfit had convinced me as sound. And if a generous cow-puncher
advises a man to turn no cards in a certain game, you can be sure that
the game is bad indeed. A cowboy is not the kind of man to advise merely
a "safe deal."

Work in the corrals will put all other thoughts out of any man's head,
especially if he knows that he is there as a favour, because he is
liked and not because of his superlative skill. What he lacks in skill
he will have to balance by determination and sheer output of muscle.

Here is where you will see the real roping. Here you will see a calf
noosed by the horns and snubbed, and, next moment, a rope twirl before
him, just where his forefeet are going, twirl before him--a flick, and
his forelegs are roped, and down he goes. When the ropes caught the
calves by the hind legs the work of throwing and holding was far easier
than when the neck was caught.

It is wild work: a lariat spins near you and disappears. You wrestle a
calf, and as you wrestle it a tautened rope, between some other saddle
horn and roped calf, appears before you, ready to trip you. You learn to
be a sooty, ensanguined gymnast.

All day the work went on to the sound of calves and cows bawling each to
each, shouts of the tallyman sitting on high where the revolving gate
gave entrance to the large corral, shouts for the iron, shouts when
calves rose, cut loose, indignant at the treatment accorded them.
Representatives from surrounding ranches sat on the top rail beside the
tallyman, smoking and at ease.

I soon learnt how to kneel on the head and grasp the forelegs of a
downed calf. Then would come the shout for the branding iron, the sound
of it, the sizzle, the smell. On some ranches there is a man told off at
the swing gate between the corrals to ear-mark, cutting the ears with
the ranche's cut, as the calves pass through. On others this is done by
a man who is in the actual branding corral beside the iron man. It is
all very slick work. Even the gate man has a very lively job swinging
the gate now left, now right, according to what animals come along,
according to whether they be for branding, or for running aside into the
neighbouring corral where the strays of other ranges bawl.

By sundown every one in the branding corral was splashed to the eyes
with dung and blood, black with dirt and soot. I had several knuckles
a-bleeding, and my nails were torn with grappling. Outside the corral
the roar rose and fell all day--of calves and cows calling to each
other, upset by the sundering of them.

I have no doubt that I was far more tired than necessary by night,
because there is a trick in throwing calves--as in most things--and
though I watched it performed intently, and imitated it eagerly, I often
had to put on much more muscle than necessary to compensate for what I
lacked in the ju-jitsu of the business.

I can quite understand the stories one hears of dukes' sons and the sons
of "belted earls" going back to the range. I know, by my own experience,
how the range calls its lovers back. Once, years after, a visit to the
old country was shortened for me because, out of an old country open
grate a spluttering coal discharged a red-hot fragment on to the
hearthrug. And the vision of my empty hostess posing before me like a
Sargent portrait, and the sound of her inane and ceaseless laughter, and
her "Ah, doncher know?" became, instead of pathetic, revolting. A
picture had been conjured up by that odour of singed rug--not a picture
of the branding corral only. The corral was but the jumping-off place to
which the smell of singeing took me, the jumping-off place for the
flooding pictures of space, rolling land, foothills, bastions of the Bad
Lands. I went home early from that house, mighty ashamed that I had ever
strayed into such an outfit of _poseurs_--and I cut short my visit home
too.

Perhaps six weeks later, when the round-ups in our vicinity were over,
and many of our men were away attending other neighbouring round-ups,
the foreman told me to hitch up a team and go into Black Kettle.

"You come from Black Kettle," he said, "so you may as well take this
job. We get our supplies mostly from Lone Tree; but there's a
consignment at Black Kettle for us."

So at sun-up next day I was gathering the reins and rolling out for
Black Kettle, and thus again sat, content and tired, two evenings later,
under the stars on the Palace hotel verandah. Who should come into my
half sleepy content, with bent head, half recognising me and yet wanting
to make sure, but my old railway boss, Douglas! We leapt at each other
and pump-handled vigorously.

"Well," said he, looking me up and down, "how do you enjoy shovelling
dung instead of shovelling gravel? I mind my young brother was terrible
eager to be a soldier--thought it was all riding around in a dinky
tunic. When they put him scrubbin' floors and carryin' wood he quit.
There was some spirit of rebellion in his troop at the time and he
joined in with the mutineers, stalled on doing chores instead of bein' a
picture soldier. They were stationed up at some fort near the boundary
and they just stepped across to a Canadian Mounted Police dept over the
line, the whole bunch of malcontents, and they all stripped their
clothes and gets a receipt from the police-boys and was sitting around
in civilian's clothes when the rest of the troop came to take them back.
There was nothin' to do but laugh. By the time that any red tape
arrangements could be made for liftin' them across the boundary my
brother was in Australia. Next I hear of him he's in the New South Wales
police. Kids is funny when a uniform is concerned."

I thought Douglas was pulling my leg with a tall story, but the
bar-keep--yes, we had wandered, subconsciously, to the bar-room while
Douglas spoke--chipped in:

"That's right--'extradition,' they calls it. I remember that fracas--up
in Montana it was. But that was half a troop that deserted. There was a
funnier thing with one of the police boys. He had got a kick against the
force--which ain't usual. I ain't struck on Canucks; but these Canuck
police-boys is the most proud of their profession of any soldiers I ever
knew. I was up at Pincher Creek when it happened. One of the boys had a
grudge against his corporal, or his routine, or something; and one day
he pikes out of the R.N.-W.M.P. shack in his birthday garments, and he
runs like hell for the boundary. The corporal runs after him and then
stops when there was no doubt that the police-boy was in Ammurican
territory. The mother-naked young man borrows a blanket from a Blackfoot
squaw what was standing by, and he executes a dance, and spans his nose
at his late corporal. If there had been no folks around, I surmise that
corporal would have been liable to step over into Ammurica proper and
pull the police-boy back again, and arrest him."

"Pardon me," I said. "You said 'American' just now. Is Canada not in
America?"

The bar-keep looked me up and down, smiling.

"Not yet!" he said.

So off we went into a pleasant wrangle, in which the American Eagle
spread his wings until he might have split his chest--and time flew
past. At last I asked Douglas how he was getting on.

"Have you still got that Dago gang?" I asked.

"Sure," he said.

"And find them satisfactory?"

"Sure! I'm satisfied all right. I've just been down seeing the
Superintendent of the Division. It seems that the Dago agent who
supplies them says he's heerd from them that they want to quit badly.
They've filed a petition to him--kind of round-robin. He's been
agitating so severely that the Superintendent sent for me to run down
and see him. Am I not satisfied with them? You bet your life I am."

"The white gang is up beside you now," I suggested.

"Not yet," he said. "They delays coming. I'm the only white man up the
line--and I am surely enjoying myself. Say--" his voice dropped,
"Dunnage--the section-boss--tells me he was working away on the line and
they stands aside to let a freight go past. It was at a grade. Sometimes
they nearly looses them heavy grades with heavy trains, and has to slide
back and charge it."

"I know," said I.

"Well--they was going very slow, just crawling past, and Dunnage and his
gang standing by. And so they could see under all the cars. And who do
you think was playing hobo, stealing a ride, lying underneath on a
brace-rod?"

"Who?"

"Apache Kid," he said quietly. He looked at me attentively.

"Look here, Douglas," I said, "I've been waiting for some one to mention
him. I was advised to say little about him till I was spoken to. Do you
know, I like that man."

"So do I," said Douglas, and nodded.

"He may be a train-robber, but----"

"He never robbed a train of mine!" said Douglas, and laughed. "And
besides, there's a story going round here about him having a pardon.
Now, that night I saw him tangled up with the train trimmings, that was
the day that the two troopers was brought in here. I read the papers,
but there's something crooked there. Everybody here tells me that he
said he had a pardon--took it out and flourished it too. But then Apache
is deep."

"I saw the pardon," said I.

"To read?"

"Sure! I read every word of it, all the 'Whereases' about the hold-up,
and trial, and conviction--and a full pardon."

"On condition?"

"No. No condition. It was just a full pardon."

"Um! That makes me believe the story I heard all the more. They would
not put the reason for the pardon in cold print."

"No--of course not."

"Then why in thunder did he shoot the two troopers who came with him?"

"Did he shoot them?" I asked.

"Well he ran, didn't he, when they came in? He was underneath the very
same train that carried them back to Lincoln! Dropped off somewhere on
the line and vamoosed!"

"True," I said, "but then he had been up against the Government--and he
was going to be blamed whether he did kill them or not."

"Um. But I don't seem to find the story quite satisfying. There's
something behind it. So far as I'm concerned I've nothing to say to it.
If Apache Kid came right into my camp I would give him a meal and pass
him on without a word. I want to have the pros and cons of the
thing--even if Government is at the back of it--before I budge one way
or another."

We retired to the verandah to discuss the case further; and we were so
employed when Colonel Kemp came over to the verandah and said, peering
up through the dusk to be sure of me:

"May I have a word with you, young man?"

"Certainly."

I stepped down to him, but he urged me back up the steps by my elbow;
led me into the lit bar-room, glanced round to see that we were alone,
and then held forth a newspaper, pointing to a paragraph.

"Read that," he said.

What I read was by no means pleasing. It told a pretty story indeed of
some sleuth's cleverness. Apache Kid was still abroad in the land, a
free man; but "our special correspondent" had probably got a clue that
would hasten his capture. The foreman of a well-known ranchman had
informed him that, on a trail above Black Kettle, he had seen Apache Kid
in company with one of his hands, had seen him there on the very day
that the two troopers (after found dead) rode out from Black Kettle with
the Apache Kid. There was, he said, no sign of any trooper on the trail.
He saw no blue-coat. But he discharged his cowboy on the spot--for the
cowboy had been sent out to some work in the morning and should not have
been in that neighbourhood. Knowing the name that Apache Kid had, and
not wanting undesirables in his outfit, the foreman had fired his
cowboy! Interviewed as to his reason for his suspicion he had told that
it had been roused by the fact that the cowboy in question had signed on
to his outfit as "William Barclay" and, later, a letter had come for him
as "John Williams."

"Where is William Barclay--alias John Williams, or John Williams--alias
Will Barclay?" ended the column. "Can he shed a light on the mystery of
the two troopers?"

"He can!" I cried, "he can! Come here, Colonel," and I caught him by the
coat lapel, so hastily that I caught an end of beard also, and
apologised. "Come along!" and I marched him to the corner table, and
shouted to Douglas to join us, and shouted for the proprietor, and
forced them--they all much astonished--into chairs, and sat down
confronting them.

"Now!" I said. "I know you, gentlemen, are all white. I have a story to
tell you."

"And the title is what?" asked the amazed proprietor.

"Apache Kid," said I.

"Um!" he said.

"This Apache Kid," said I, "is a train-robber, but----"

I paused.

"You would remark," said the Colonel, "that there is more in this
Apache Kid trouble than meets the eye!"

"Bar-keep!" said the proprietor.

"Sir!"

"Set 'em up on me."

And then, very deliberately, I told them the story of the Apache Kid
from the day he had come to my aid at the Dago camp, leaving out only
the matter of the money I had carried to Mrs. Johnson for him. When I
told of the attempt on him at the hollow tree the Colonel held out his
hand and shook mine.

Douglas at that sat back.

"Do you mean to tell me that Government would tell these troopers to--"
began the proprietor, puzzled-looking.

"No, sir," said Douglas, "but luck plays into the hands of railways and
governments. I still has faith in the United States, but there's
individuals I don't trust no more than a spread rail."

"Here's to Apache Kid anyhow," said the proprietor, and lifted his
glass.

"The point for us," said the Colonel, "is that the city of Black Kettle
don't have any connection with corralling the Apache Kid, or attempting
to corral him. What's this?"

A wild whoop sounded without; a howl--and entered that cowboy who had
been told by the foreman of the Diamond K: "I'm looking for ropers," to
which he had replied: "You'll find heaps of them."

He dashed up to the bar-keep without seeing us as we sat in the corner.

"Say!" he said, "is there a gent name of Barclay, or Williams, or Alias
Bill, in Black Kettle?"

The bar-keep was mute, and--so heated was the cow-puncher's manner--that
I slacked my gun in the sheath before I coughed and said:

"Here I am, sir!"




CHAPTER XVII

ANOTHER CONVERT


"Could I have a word with you, sir?" asked the newcomer.

"Certainly," said I, and accompanied him over to a corner.

"You recalls me, I guess?" he asked.

"I do," said I. "You are the gentleman to whom the foreman of the
Diamond K said: 'I'm looking for a good roper.'"

He smiled faintly.

"Yap, and I says: 'You'll find heaps of them in this state.' Yap--you
recalls me all right. I'm Yuma Bill and I ain't no slouch. Which I don't
stand for no man to look me up and down and offer me a job that
aways--trying to get me to ask if there is a chance of a job, instead of
which he's wanting me for a job. Give me a straight game. Which the only
answer possible if a man says: 'I'm lookin' for a roper,' is: 'Well,
you'll find heaps.' Now, that man acts every way like that. There's bin
some official person up at the Diamond K and he's told them about
meeting you and Apache Kid, and put them on to me for cumulative
evidence. Up they comes to the Three Bars and asks for me. They has
information that I was on the trail the day them two troopers goes out
for a passear in the hills with Apache, which turns out no brief
passear, but leads 'em to the Golden Gates sudden and simultaneous. I
looks at these officials. Here's a nice way to start with a man--kind of
insinuating I had plugged them"--he paused as if for my opinion.

"If they had thought so," said I, "they would not have begun in that
way."

"Well no--I see that afterwards. If they had thought that, they'd have
begun with: 'Yuma Bill, I arrests you in the name of the law.' I reckon
that would have made trouble too. Anyhow, they begin like what I
narrates to you. So I says: 'Put your cards down and let me see your
hand. I ain't playin' in this game; but I can direct you some in a play
maybe.'--'Where was you,' they says, 'on the third of the month?' they
says.

"'Third of the month? Third of the month? Let me see. Why, I was in
Black Kettle,' I says.--'When did you leave Black Kettle?' they
says.--'Before noon,' I says. 'If I had bin sensible I'd have had my
siesta in the shade of the Palace Hotel and hit the trail
subsequent.'--'Did you meet anybody on the trail?' they asks me. It was
at this here point that I tumbles to it where they had come from,
because there was a Diamond K boy guides them over and his presence
enters my perception. I reckon they needed a guide, wasn't competent to
follow a waggon-track, let alone a staked trail. I says: 'I met a
hoss-wrangler, first day, who calls himself a foreman; and he says to
me: "I'm lookin' for a good roper," and I says to him: "You'll find
heaps of them in this state."'

"'Who was this man?' they asks.

"'A hoss-wrangler who thinks he's a foreman,' says I.

"They turns to Kelly, who was on the carpet. Puzzled they was. And he
explains, and adds they've made a mistake if they think this man--which
is me-- But they interrupts to thank him for explainin' _hoss-wrangler_,
and then says to me: 'Who was this man?'

"'Well,' says I. 'I told you.'

"The boss advises me to be open.

"'See here, boss,' I says. 'I punch your cows, and you give me a square
deal; but these here gents comes along and gives me a guessing
competition. Maybe I don't guess, and if they can't pow-wow plain and
say what they got to say, well! I got to go and wrestle yearlings this
morning. And if I did meet a ornary hoss-thief on the trail----'

"'A hoss-thief?' they interrupts.

"'Well,' says I, taken aback some, 'I reckon I might say it to his face
if I was sure he sent you along here to cross-question me like I was a
kid and you a school marm.'

"They smiles at that and tumbles.

"'Did you,' they asks, 'meet any one else?'

"'Yap,' I says. 'I met, in company with said hoss-thief, two gents, one
of whom has punched cows with me and ridden the identical range for two
years.'

"'Ah!' they says. 'And the other?'

"'The other,' I says, 'I don't recall ever seein' him before. He was a
young, fair man with a Scottish voice; and I leaves them two gents in
the company of said hoss-thief, and rides on; and then I sees--' and I
pauses, 'the most astounded and surprised object.'

"'Yes?' they says.

"'I sees,' says I, slow and ponderous, 'on the following morning, where
I camps, a badger sitting looking at me, and I hails him affable, it
being a lonesome trail. I says to that badger--' and they interrupts
some irritable, but smiling:

"'Well the badger ain't in this. Did you see nothing else noteworthy?'

"'Sure,' says I. 'I rolls my blankets and hits the trail again, and then
I meets up face to face with a--a jack-rabbit,' I says, 'clawing his
long off ear in a bush, and we looks at each other, and that
jack-rabbit--he hits the trail. And now I got to get to work,' I says.

"The boss he yelps with laughter and disorganises his courteous
demeanour. But they gives me up then, and I says 'Adios!' and pikes out,
and curves back to the corrals. When I see the boss again, he tells me,
to relieve my mind, that they discusses my case no more when I departs.
They goes off on some other scent, and so I asks the boss: 'Could I get
a day off?'

"He looks at me curious. He was at the corrals himself then, sitting up
beside the tallyman, having been down helping the wrestlers and got a
rib moved when a two-year old maverick objects.

"'Sure,' he says, 'you can go. But be sure to come back,' he says.
'Don't go shootin' up marshals and sheriffs just because they asks you
leading questions.'

"'All right, boss,' I says. 'Thank you. I ain't no led hoss.'

"'What are you?' he says, nursing his side.

"'I ain't sure,' I responds, 'but if they take me for a maverick and
tries to run a brand on me I'll sure explain how I've been running the
range without a brand so long that I reckon I'm an outlaw bull, or
something like that, and I'm not going to be branded yet. If these
detective gents wants to call me a hoss-thief, why don't they, and get
through?'

"'But it ain't you they wants to corral,' he explains. 'You see, the
Apache Kid has slipped them, and he can cover his trail; but they've
heard from the Diamond K that there was a kind of green partner along
with him and they think if they got him he might be able to lay
information----'

"'Well,' I says, 'that's how I sized it up; so I wants a few days off.'

"'Go then,' he says, 'and God be with you'; and I leaves him sitting on
the top rail, nursing his side and hollerin', and I burns the trail--"
he paused, "to look for the green partner of Apache Kid."

"We'd better," said I, "join the boys. We're discussing this identical
business just now."

"You ain't so green, stranger," he asked whimsically, "as to be drinking
soft drinks? There ain't nothin' but two creeks and a spring between
here and the Three Bars."

I pushed a chair for him, and the proprietor explained: "Drinks are on
me, Yuma;" and Yuma, with a cock-tail at his elbow, sat down, re-told
his story, and I re-told mine for his benefit. He listened attentively.
Then:

"Now, mister," he said, "you won't object to a question. Your narrative
is straight; but it's like as if we was playing a game and the candle
goes out, and we has to take your word on the last card in the dark."

"I see," said I. "Well, I can only give you my word that I read Apache
Kid's pardon--and it was genuine."

"Then the missing card is played," he said.

"You only have my word on it," I said.

"Same thing," he said. "When I symbolises this here question I had to
ask, what I meant was that I wants to ask you if you had seen and read
the pardon. I ain't the kind of gent to misdoubt your word." And he
looked quite prepared to quarrel with me for the suggestion!

He quaffed the dregs of his glass.

"Now," he said, "I hits the waggon trail back to the Three Bars, and I
tells the boys the straight goods. This here is a game between the
Government and the Apache Kid. I ain't no friend to train-robbers but I
loves a straight game. I ain't an old man, but I seen a man down near
Nogales hanged for an erroneous game. And this here is an erroneous view
of how to turn the cards."

The Colonel waggled a finger, and was about to make some comment. But we
never heard it; for just then a freight was screaming through Black
Kettle, slightly drowning down Yuma's voice--and next moment there was a
yell, another yell, and Scotty's voice came to us, high-pitched and
nervous, and agitated, and excited (just like Scotty):

"Hi! Hi! Somebody lend a hand!"

We ran out into the brilliant afternoon and whaled across to the dept,
to see a man doubled up by the track-side, and Scotty trying to lift
him, and then giving it up. He stood up and shouted afresh.

We ran, ploughing through the sand.

"Come on, boys! Come on!" shouted Scotty.

The man on the track-side, doubled up, was the Apache Kid.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE RETURN OF APACHE


The Apache Kid lay on a bed in the Palace Hotel of Black Kettle, his
mouth puckered as if in contempt, his nose as if sneering, and his eyes
as if he were in pain. For he was in pain. His left arm, and a rib, were
broken. He had jumped from the freight-train, which was not stopping at
Black Kettle, and these injuries were the result.

"But it was mad of you to come back," I said.

"Well, then, I am mad," said he. "You might roll me a cigarette."

"I'll get you a cigar," said the proprietor, and jumped from the
chair--on which he had been sitting wrong way round, with his arms on
the back, assuring Apache that he was "all right."

"No, thanks. I leave cigars to railroad magnates and senators. Give me a
cow-puncher's cigarette made out of pipe tobacco. You can't call that a
lady-like smoke--not like the things ladies smoke."

Scotty, who had run over to wire for Doc Taylor, and just now returned,
offered a plug of blackstrap with two large bites out of it; but I was
rolling the desired cigarette.

"It seems I'm at home here," said Apache, when he had inhaled and blown
out a volume of smoke. "Say Scotty! Why didn't that train stop here?"

"You didn't ask the conductor," said Scotty grimly--and a grim smile
went around; for Apache Kid had arrived in Black Kettle hanging along
one of the fore and aft brace-rods, and, finding that the train was
going through, had jumped. The speed had been too quick for a jump,
taken in that position, to be wholly successful.

"What in thunder did you come back for?" asked the old Colonel, who had
helped to carry Apache upstairs and now stood at the foot of the bed,
leaning on the end rail as if it were a gate.

Apache Kid looked round the room from face to face.

"A little bit of business," he said.

"Well, say!" said the proprietor. "Sholly you can trust us!"

"Oh yes! I beg your pardons. I express myself badly. The trouble is that
you might object to my business." He looked round again and then said:
"How much do you know?"

"We know all," replied Colonel Kemp, "right down to the pardon."

"Well then--damn that arm--I've come back to interview Johnson."

"Johnson! Buck Johnson? He skipped the day you did."

"Yes I know; but he's around here somewhere. You see I've heard from
Jake Johnson's wife and she tells me," he turned to me, "that Buck
Johnson followed you that day. I thought he was painting his nose in the
bar, and that all I had to do was to lie on the bed in my room. 'So
long as he knows I'm here,' thought I, 'he will remain in Black Kettle.'
I apologise to you, sir. I never thought he was after you----"

The room looked mystified. The Colonel looked at me thoughtfully, the
proprietor puzzled.

"Trail's hot," said Yuma Bill.

"Thought you had told us all," said the proprietor to me.

"You said you had told them all," said Apache.

"Oh well," I said, "all about the pardon. Naturally I was not going to
tell--what evidently I can tell now--about"--I turned to the
others--"Apache gave me a parcel to take to Mrs. Jake Johnson. It was
the day that the troopers were brought in."

"They made me bolt," said Apache; "---- fool that I was."

"Oh I don't know. We'd have had to do our duty," said the Colonel, then
looked to me to tell more.

"Well," said I. "Buck Johnson followed me. I had given Mrs. Johnson the
parcel, she had opened it----"

"Read my letter?" Apache asked.

"Yes, and we sat down to have a pot of tea. Along came Johnson, and I
hid in behind the curtain."

"Now," said the proprietor, "why did you hide? This here is purely a
legal question."

Kemp stood pulling his long beard.

"Because I was there on Apache's business and had to be careful. I hid
behind a blanket that makes two rooms of the shack. Buck Johnson
arrived. He was looking for me. There was no doubt."

"Where was your hoss?" asked Yuma Bill.

"It was running down in the bottoms."

"Um! He didn't see it and waited for you?"

"No; he didn't see it; but he expected me to arrive. He waited and
waited. I expect he thought I had taken the wrong trail. But he guessed
where I had gone all right. Anyhow, there he was--waiting and waiting.
Finally he offered to stop right there all night."

"The hell he did!" said the proprietor and Yuma Bill in harmony.

"He said a poor lone woman needed some man in the house," I said.

"He would!" said the proprietor.

"And what did you do then?" asked Yuma.

"I pulled my gun," I said, "and just then Buck Johnson spotted the
money."

"You didn't say anything about money," said the proprietor.

"We all understands it was in the aforementioned passel," said Yuma. "We
follows this trail easy, even when it ain't blazed or staked."

"He dived for a handful of it then," said I, "and I stepped out--held
him up, and brought him back to Black Kettle."

"Who catches your hoss?" asked Yuma. "Did you go hunting together in the
bottoms--you with your gun on him, or did you chance it--having annexed
his gun previous? Or did the lone woman of his agonised, unselfish
thoughts ride herd on him for you till you gets the hoss?"

The Colonel said drily: "When you gets interrogating, Yuma, you are a
whole hogger!"

"Which I'm interested in this gent's actions behind a gun," explained
Yuma.

"Mrs. Johnson got the horse," said I; "and down we came."

"Well," said Apache. "That is why I'm back in Black Kettle. And I think
you gentlemen will agree that I am right to be looking for Buck Johnson.
What happened when you struck Black Kettle?" he asked me.

"We struck Black Kettle over the benches just as a train was pulling
in," said I, "and he decided to board her, so I let him."

"And his horse, which he had hired from me, comes over," said the
Colonel.

Apache nodded.

"But why did Johnson run like that?" he asked puzzled.

"Can't you see," said I, "that he knew I would tell you, when we
returned, all about his game, and that you would not stand for----"

"Never thought of that," said Apache. "But you need not speak hastily to
an invalid with a broken arm and a rib out of place when the said man
has come back to find Johnson and kill him for----"

"Hush!" said the Colonel. "This here is the ravings of fever. Come
along, gents--come along--and leave Mr. Apache Kid quiet till the Doc
arrives."

"Ravings of fever! I tell you I'm going to plug Buck Johnson!" cried
Apache.

The Colonel was herding all from the room.

"Ravings of delirium," he said decidedly. "We pays no attention to such
phrases----"

The proprietor broke in:

"Come along, boys! No! Say! Maybe one of us had better keep Apache
company while he's light-headed this ways."

"I'm not----" began Apache.

"You stay," said the proprietor to me, and the rest bundled out.




CHAPTER XIX

THE HURDY-GURDY


There are those who contend that it is absurd to say "Englishmen are
this"--"Scotsmen are that"--"Irishmen are the other"--"Americans are
so-and-so"; there are those who say that it is ridiculous to remark "As
for niggers I feel--" whatever it may be, or "As for Irish Roman
Catholics--"; similarly do some say that one cannot generalise about
professions and say: "Any teachers I ever knew were--"; but I am going
to dare these persons and say that, of all professional men, I love
medical practitioners best. And Doc Taylor was one of the finest
specimens.

He came into the room with a little bouncing step, laid down his bag
gaily, and had already, with one quick blink through his pince-nez, seen
all, I think, that was to be seen.

"How do you do, Doctor Taylor?" said Apache, and held out his hand.

"How do you do?" said the doctor. "Ah! You are the gentleman who
assisted me to patch Douglas when the hillside got up and hit him. You
didn't tell me your name then, but there's no necessity in this part of
the world to tell names, is there? Now look at me. I'm Doc to
ninety-nine out of a--um--yes--well, the arm will come first. Can't you
get the coat off? Scissors--" then came the "zzz!" of the cloth being
cut. "Beautiful night, isn't it? It was quite a great ride up here.
I'll be riding back through the dawn."

"You rode this time, Doc?"

"Yes--rode--pump-cars are very nice----"

"Ahhh!"

"Hurt? Pained a bit? I'll be as easy as possible. I heard a most curious
sound on the way up, a sound like a bell. It rang--then stopped--rang
again--now this will be painful--just for a minute--don't hit me with
the free hand--and RANG!"

"Oh!! Yes? You were saying?"

"I forget what I was saying. That was painful, eh?"

"Sure!"

"Yes--I was saying it rang away up above me, then suddenly ahead of
me--then far behind. I thought I was haunted----"

"Um!" said Apache. "You must write to some scientist for the
explanation. I heard it once when I was with some Indians on another dry
belt. They didn't know what it was--or wouldn't tell. I found out
later----"

"Yes? Now that's better. You found out? This will hurt just a
little----"

"It was--Oh!"

"Yes. A little painful that. I'll be as easy as possible. You found out?
I'm immensely interested in such phenomena."

"It's electricity in the air. That's all I can tell you. I forget the
whole explanation. The dryness has something to do with it. Anyhow, the
atmosphere--Oh!--I wondered if it was a bell-bird. A man I met who had
been on the Amazon told me about bell-birds. I reckon if we had
bell-birds in--oooh!--North America----"

Doc Taylor bounced round and said: "Give him a glass of whisky, please."

When Apache Kid came round again the doctor was sitting on a chair
looking at him thoughtfully.

"Feel better?"

"Yes, thanks. Finished?"

"Quite finished."

And still the Doc sat looking at Apache Kid. Then gently he said:

"By the way--I know it is supposed to help the sight to wear
ear-rings--but--eh--well, as a medical man I would advise that you
remove them. They are certainly very small, almost invisible, but, as a
medical man, I would advise that you remove them."

"Oh, are you against the ordinary theory? Is it a mere superstition?"

"Well--I don't know," the Doc was tucking his belongings into his little
bag. "I only suggest their removal because they might aid in hurrying on
a trouble in the neck and--" he rose and turned to the door,
"'stretching hemp,' I believe it is called; and it is an ugly end. I can
do something with a bullet wound, but--" his feet tripped down the
stairs.

"I'll be back day after to-morrow," he called. "Rest--rest----"

Thus Doc Taylor joined the conspiracy.

Suddenly, as he descended, I heard strange sounds coming up to us. I
could not think what they signified. Then "biff!" went a revolver shot.

Apache struggled to a sitting position. I laid my hand to my gun. There
was silence below--not even the first strange sounds continued--and then
back came Doc Taylor, running, with the proprietor at his heels.

"It's all right!" cried the Doc, crimson with laughter. "It's a man with
sheep-skin chaps! The barman thought it would help you to have some
music, and put a nickel in the hurdy-gurdy. The sheep-skin chaps man
thought it would irritate an invalid, and so----"

"So Yuma tries to stop it," explained the proprietor, "and when he
couldn't, he pulls his gun--and plugs it! Got it right in the works, and
it gave a death rattle like a large mainspring or a bunch of
rattlers--and expires."

"Day after to-morrow--rest----" and the Doc departed again.




CHAPTER XX

BUCK RETURNS


The stars looked down on Black Kettle and found it as quiet as on that
day when I had struck it and thought there was nothing there but the
railway platform. The barman snoozed with his head on a box of cigars.
The nickel-in-the-slot hurdy-gurdy, with cracked visage, looked ruefully
on the sand-filled spittoons that twinkled on the floor; the yellow lamp
looked sullenly out; stars peeped under the eaves into the bar-room.

A faint odour of liver and bacon augured the advent of supper. Just as
when I struck it there was nothing but quiet in Black Kettle. Then the
passenger came in.

I looked out and saw the lit cars run round the foot of the bluffs, saw
them slow up, heard the engine bell clang, heard the "All aboard!" of
the conductor, and saw the lit cars go out, out, out, pick up speed--saw
the tail light twinkle and then go snap out round the bend; then saw a
shadow coming from the dept.

"Scotty coming over for supper," I thought; but the light still showed
at the rear window of his room.

The shadow drew nearer. I seemed to recognise it. Then the light went
out in Scotty's room and I saw him coming across and wondered, now that
I saw him, that I had thought the first man was he.

From the Colonel's store came also a figure, bulky in the dim
light--Yuma Bill. Yuma Bill waddled in his sheep-skin "chaps" to the
verandah, arriving there about level with the man who preceded Scotty
from the dept. I looked from Yuma Bill to--Buck Johnson!

The light from the hotel door was on them, so Johnson doubtless did not
notice me sitting by the side of the door, outside. I fancy he did not,
for neither did Yuma Bill. Yuma strolled in easily after him; and I, as
soon as the sound of the heels had passed heavily indoors, made a bee
line for the Colonel's store.

"Hullo!" he said. "I've been waiting for you. I want to suggest
something to you."

"Yes?"

"I want to suggest that you gets out of town back to your outfit and
tells the boys, where you are now, all the story you've told us here in
Black Kettle. And you should write to Maxim, the owner of the Diamond
K--who is a white man--a full account of how you happened to have two
names----"

"And about Apache and the troopers?" I asked, wondering what he was
after.

"No, no. Just an account of how you came to have two names and saying
you feels it laid upon you to let him know you ain't no criminal, seeing
how you worked for him, and seeing how the papers are telling that he
employed a tough. You give him permission to publish your letter in the
press."

"Um! It's a good idea. What's your whole mind, Colonel? Have you
something behind? Is this an end in itself?"

"Oh well," said the Colonel, "I don't know. The owner of the Diamond K
is liable then to fire his foreman for making unpleasant stories about
his outfit. There's something in me would rejoice over that. You see, in
the old days, you would have gone right over and shot that coyote for
his clever story."

"Oh! I see."

"Well--if he wants to do you an injury and make a name for himself as
clever, this idea of you sending the owner an explanation--as you feels
called upon, says you--will square that anyhow. The firing of him is an
after-thought, I guess. It's your health is the main idea."

"Oh! I'll leave it," said I. "I don't think I care very much for
opinion." Indeed I had other thoughts at the moment--thoughts not of
myself.

The Colonel stroked his beard.

"Well," said he. "I got to be straight with you. Yuma Bill tells me he
is so angry about the foreman of the Diamond K having put the 'tecs on
to him, for what they calls cumulative evidence, that he reckons, now
that he's told you what they wanted to know about you further than the
Diamond K foreman had to tell 'em--well, he hankers some to go up and
kill that coyote. I advises not; for, if he does, I, as the mayor of
Black Kettle, has to see he's arrested and hand him over to the marshal
at Lone Tree. So I suggested to Yuma Bill this more civilised way of
doing." Suddenly he scanned me more intently.

"You got something to tell me and you've been waiting to swing your
rope," he hazarded.

"I have," said I. "Do you know who came off the train just now?"

"Who?"

"Buck Johnson."

"Eh? Oh! You're sure?"

"Quite positive. I've looked at him keenly enough along a gun, you know.
I don't forget."

"Say!" the Colonel snatched his hat from the counter. "We'll go over and
eat supper."

So the Colonel shut the store and we went over--to eat supper.

"I reckon Buck has heard that Apache left Black Kettle, and so he comes
back. I reckon he has seen the papers about you, too, and he comes along
to watch progress and give some more evidence if the 'tec gents come
cavortin' in to Black Kettle for more news. I wonder if you should show
yourself? When do you hit the road back to the Triangle?"

"Sun-up," said I.

"Um! There's liable to be trouble if you and Johnson meets."

"Not in Black Kettle," I said. "He's not going to make trouble here."

"This needs thinking out," he said shaking his head once, slowly. "Say,
I think you'd better be invisible till we gets Buck Johnson to talk. His
return to Black Kettle changes things a heap. You go and keep Apache
company till we reports to you."

"Perhaps it might be better," said I; and the Colonel, finding that
Johnson had gone into the supper room, signed to me anon that the way
was clear. Up I went in the darkness and entered Apache's room. I could
hear his deep breathing, and as I drew near he stirred. I struck a
match.

"Oh it's you," he said, and his hand came out from among the propping
pillows.

I lit the lamp and sat down.

"Had supper?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I thought I would have it up here with you. Just came up
to see if you were awake."

"Awake and thinking," he said. "By God! You're very good to me. All the
boys are very good to me. I think Black Kettle is the only place in the
world that isn't hostile to me. Roll me a cigarette."

I rolled it and gave it to him to wet, and held a match for him.

"Give me the match," he said, angrily. "I never let any man dance
attendance on me like that. No, sir--not a waiter even should ever hold
a match to a man's cigar. Let him light the match--that's attentive--and
waiters are paid for that. But never let him hold it while you light.
The trouble is that waiters are either plumb inattentive, and throw the
matches at you, or else they want to make menials of themselves. No
wonder God repented Him that He had made man. I saw a kid once larruped
by its mother and then it ran to her and hid its head in her lap to be
comforted! I saw that on the night I held up the Transcontinental at
Three Creeks--that's four years ago--and, by heck, it helped me to hold
them up good! 'That's life,' I said. 'That's what we're here for--get it
in the eye and then get comforted by what gave you it in the eye. Be
driven to drink by the discords of church bells and then have your soul
saved by a parson. Not in mine, thanks! I wish Buck Johnson would think
of dropping in at Black Kettle again. I feel myself wanting to kill
him." He shot me a sharp look. "He's just the kind of man to come back,
too," he snapped. "He'll hear I've gone--the papers have got that; and
back he'll come to be on hand in case any lies are wanted in addition to
the truths that I'm up against. It would give me great delight to hear
that he was back. I'd slip down to plug him right here. And then I think
I'd plug myself. I'm all in. I've had enough. I have no use for a broken
arm, Alias."

I thought it was as well that he did not know that the foreman of the
Diamond K had made a pretty story, lugging me into his trouble. It was
because of the way Johnson had treated me that Apache had come
back--looking for Johnson, to kill him for having followed me. He felt
badly about that. He would feel badly about the evidence of the Diamond
K foreman. Earlier in the day he had said:

"No! I will never get over that son of a wolf following you. I'd never
have asked you to go up there for me if I had thought he would do that!"

If he heard of the Diamond K foreman he would get up now, broken arm and
all, and ride up to interview him, even more furious than Yuma Bill. But
what I said now was:

"Well, if Johnson did come back you would repay the boys here very
poorly by going down and shooting him up. You know--right down to Doc
Taylor--who isn't a resident here at all--they all want to give you a
show. It would make them feel tired if you----"

"Yes, I guess it would. Let me see--is this fair?" He struggled up to a
sitting position. "Let me see. There's one thing a man must be careful
about--and that is letting sentiment hold him down. I've seen many a
good man held down the way Coriolanus was held down--you remember."

I stared at him.

"Well!" he cried. "Don't stare! I've got a memory. I don't forget
Coriolanus, though it's twenty years since I read it. I've seen it in
lesser ways than the way Shakespeare dished it up. But life's plumb full
of it. Some man gets on to a big idea and starts following it, and along
comes somebody and says: 'Don't make your head ache!' Or you get it with
the bell that drives men to drink in cities, kicking up its
self-righteous row, and if you swear at it the parson says you're a bad
one. No--perhaps it would be better after all--for the world in
general--for me to kill Johnson; and maybe it's a mistake to hold myself
down by saying: 'The boys at Black Kettle have been very good to you,
Apache. They don't want you to get into any more trouble for a
spell--take care of your arm, Apache! Take care of your rib, Apache!' Of
course they mean well. I know they mean well! It's sweet of them,
but--Oh for God's sake let me think. Put out that light and let me see
the stars."

I lowered and blew out the light. I could hear him breathing very
deeply.

Then suddenly he said: "Say!"

"Well?" said I.

"Did anybody get off the train to-night?"

Dead silence.

"It's all right," he said. "I generally think a heck of a lot about a
man when he's coming near. Would you be so good as to light the lamp
again?"

I lit the lamp.

"Buck Johnson is below," he said definitely.

I sat down on the end of the bed and smiled. I could see that he was,
for him, pale, and that there was a burning red spot on either cheek
bone.

"Well," said I, "it's a free world."

"It's all right," he said again. "Funny! I've been lying here thinking
about a man with a stammer. He was in an outfit that I worked for once.
I had a heck of a row with a man. I was sitting meditating how to put a
quarrel on him in such a way that he would pull his gun on me. That was
in 1888--and if a man pulled a gun on you in a cow-camp in 1888, and you
shot him, they just said 'self-defence.' And as I was sitting meditating
I heard the fellow say: 'Ca-ca-ca-can any of you boys te-te-te-tell me
how to sp-p-p-p-pell _remuda_?' I don't know what it is, Alias; maybe it's
weakness--well, if it is I'm weak--but it was so blamed pathetic, that
voice, that we all spelt it for him with a kind of a choke. There's no
doubt men are queer beasts. And after I heard that stammer I thought:
'Oh to hell with the man I wanted to kill! I guess he's built that
way--to hell with him.' Then there was once in Cheyenne: I had left my
grip in a boarding-house in Denver and my partner there ran up to the
boarding-house to see a man whom we had got half friendly with, and he
found another man, who lived in the place, with my grip open, reading
some letters of mine. My partner wrote to me about it, saying he had
carried the grip off and was forwarding it to me by the Express Company.
Also he said in his letter: 'I tell you about this--but don't let him
know I told you. Don't write about it. He would know that I had told
you, as I was alone when I saw him.' Well--I thought to myself: 'Why
can't my partner write: "Tell him I told you," Why is he scared? To
Hades with him!' And I wrote a note to the man who had opened my valise:
'You son of a ----, I am working just now up Cheyenne way; but when I
get through I'm coming to plug you.' There wasn't much consideration for
my partner's request--I knew that--although I told myself that I gave no
reason. Well--I decided that even to write that letter wasn't white to
my partner in Cheyenne, so I tore it up. But it kept biting, biting,
biting me--that skunk with the buck teeth opening my grip; and I quit
the job I had and took train to Cheyenne." He shook his head--I saw the
red spots burn on his cheeks. "I got on that train and somewhere about
Laramie a cripple got into the car. He was the cheeriest cripple I ever
struck. He hauled himself about on crutches and talked and joked, and I
studied him. Once, when an empty cup he held fell to the floor and he
stooped for it, the train took a curve and landed him over on my chest,
and he said: 'I beg your pardon, sir, and God-damn my God-damned leg,'
and I shoved him to his seat again and picked up his tin cup for him,
and we sat and yarned till we came to Denver, and something about that
cheerful cripple made me quite different. 'Oh confound the buck-toothed
fellow that read my letters,' I said, and I took the next train back. I
was surely going to kill him, and you know me well enough to know that
it wasn't a scare that sent me back. You can't go and kill a man when
there are cripples going around, laughing, and smoking cigars, and
God-damning their legs in that way. It takes all the hatred out of one.
There you are--things like that come in and hit me. I guessed Buck
Johnson was below and yet these stars made me say: 'Oh, confound him.
He'll be dead, and I'll be dead in a few years.' Seeing you are all so
solicitous about me I shan't go down and shoot him--not in Black Kettle.
But," he sat up again. "By heck! sentiment doesn't get him off if ever
he and I meet outside Black Kettle. If it was some dirty trick he'd
played on me personally, some bit of sentiment might get him off. But he
followed you up that day to Jake Johnson's ranch. It's a trick I don't
forgive. And he pretended to Mrs. Johnson that he was anxious about her,
and then tried to get the dough she had. No, sir. I'm going to have a
sleep now, for I feel light-headed--and I'm not going to kill him in
Black Kettle. But I'm going to kill Buck Johnson some day--I know
it--I'm quite sure of it. It's not because I've made up my mind to it.
It's because, looking calmly on at it all, I can see Destiny means me to
kill that son of a coyote. Say, I must try to sleep. Oh! Say!--no--no,
you'll be all right. Buck Johnson won't try anything on you--no, not in
Black Kettle."




CHAPTER XXI

SET A THIEF--


Next day I drove back to the Triangle, with a jag of supplies on the
waggon.

In a novel I would have stayed at Black Kettle, and news of Apache Kid's
presence there reaching Lone Tree, the marshal would have come curving
into town with a posse at his heels--and there would have been a
frightful scrap on the stairs. There was a scrap later on, tough enough
for a novel; but for the moment things did not happen so swift. You
remember in Stevenson's "Wrecker" how Captain Nares says: "Dime novels
are right enough. Nothing's wrong with the dime novel, only things
happen quicker than they do in life." This being my plain unvarnished
life during the stormy days of Apache Kid, I, as I say, went back to the
Triangle.

I pulled my freight out of Black Kettle at sun-up, before the haze had
lifted, thinking a good deal about Apache Kid and wishing him well.
Johnson had not, of course, got up so early, so I did not see him. The
spirit that tends to give a man a "show" in the West goes in harness
with the spirit of taking care of oneself. Apache was to have "a show";
but he was not to interfere with the earning of my forty dollars a
month, lest I might end either as one of the fraternity that had the
famous N.Y.Y.T. of Pete's yarn, for laureate, or as one of those whose
Bible is "The Life and Adventures of the James Brothers"--another
Apache Kid; and I fear I would not be so polished and "white" a hold-up
man. Yuma Bill also went home to his outfit--the Three Bars, a two-day
ride (or a three-day waggon trip) in the opposite direction.

"You write that letter," said Yuma as we drank our coffee by lamp-light;
the proprietor, with deranged hair and sleepy eyes, fussing us our
breakfast. "There's going to be trouble; and the owner of the Diamond K
is a quiet man, but he sure has influence."

"Don't shoot his foreman if you meet him," said I.

"That's all right," said Yuma, hitching his "chaps." "This here is a
law-abiding country; and I ain't going to commit no murder."

The round-ups had broken me into early rising, so I did not think myself
a marvel as I drove easily through the first of the day, saw the dew on
the sage-bushes, opal mists rise in the sunlight, and broad, quiet day
illumine the vastness.

I had little to say on my return. I could see that, despite the
friendliness of the boys here, silence was indeed golden. I had told
them enough already, and if trouble came to me they would "stay with
me." Any more that I might have to tell concerned Apache--not me; so, as
I say, silence was the card.

My first job, on return, was to ride over to a neighbouring round-up,
where a herd of Triangle steers had been cut by our representative, and
help to drive them home. They were to be brought clear to the home
ranch, to be branded there.

That was close on a week's job and, in the meanwhile, news--if not of
Apache Kid, then of his enemy, Buck Johnson--was forthcoming.

A bunch of beeves had gone to Black Kettle and the roadmen who drove it
over came back late at night, the night of our return with the strays,
and broke up a discussion on the relative merits of single and double
cinches by telling us that the county sheriff was hunting some
cattle-rustlers.

A ranch owner in Sonora county, next door, had been suspect for some
time. He seemed to have an astonishing number of calves in his herds;
and at the round-ups, by prior arrangements, a neighbouring herd had
been driven (ostensibly by accident, but really by deliberate intention)
into his main herd. The Sheriff had been on the spot to keep the peace,
by special request of the other ranchers, who expected trouble. And he
had been required. If he had not been on hand there might have been some
more swift deaths for the sake of a brand.

The owner in question had been suspect for long--and the result of that
intentional stampede was to unite several mothers and calves--and two of
the calves bore the brand, newly affixed, of the suspected person, while
the mothers bore other brands, brands of neighbouring ranches.

The owner was in gaol, and some of the cattle which bore even his own
brand, were already appropriated by the Sheriff; anon we would hear if
further suspicions were proved--suspicions that he not only lifted
mavericks but faked brands. The steers would be killed, their hides
stretched, the branded part cut out and left to soak. If there were
previous brands they would then show up, and inquiries would be made to
see if the owner in question had ever bought any cattle from the holders
of these other brands.

All this had given a scare to three men in Sonora County and one in
Black Kettle. The one in Black Kettle who was scared by the news was
Buck Johnson. A wire had come for him, so Scotty said, which read
simply: "Wanted urgently at home." Johnson had taken train for Sonora,
saying to Scotty that he feared his wife was ill, but the conductor had
let out that he took a fare for Placer and got off there. And thence he
had "lit out" into the hills with three men who met him there.

I was glad to know, whatever the cause of Johnson's departure, that he
had left Black Kettle. Apache Kid could not rest in bed all the time of
his stay. But I asked our men nothing of Apache, and they said no word
of him.

Suddenly the door opened and Mr. Henry, the Triangle owner, entered. It
was the first time I had seen him in the bunk-house.

"I say, boys," he said, "I've just had a wire from the Sheriff. He's
after some cattle-rustlers. He has already got the king-bolt but he
wants to round up the whole outfit. I gather they have a fair jag of
charges against them. They've headed for the Hole in the Wall country,
and he wants a posse. He's jumping off from Black Kettle. He's getting
men from various outfits to make his posse. He's advised the Circle Z
and got one man promised; the Three Bars, too, have already promised him
a man--and now he asks for two from this outfit."

There had been grunts of indignation at the "gall" of that Sheriff,
going elsewhere first; but the request for two men instead of one, from
this ranch, mollified somewhat. Everybody shouted at once, but Cy
Carter, the foreman, coming in after the owner, held up his hand.

"Say, Mr. Henry," he said, "seeing every one is so eager, I reckon we'd
better make a lottery of it"; and so a lottery we made of it. There were
twenty of us, Cy and the owner included, and twenty slips of paper went
into a sack--two of the slips marked with a cross; and then we each
drew, and held our papers till all had drawn. Then we unfolded the
slips.

Pete gave a yell and rushed out for a horse.

I put my paper back in my pocket and followed him.

"Pete's got one. Who's got the other?" I heard.

"Say--_has_ Pete got it, or is he bluffing?"

"Who's got the aces?"

"Say, boss--don't they want no more than two?"

But Pete and I were saddling.

The owner came over to me.

"Say," he said. "They tell me you are new on the range. You can ride all
right I know, but there may be some gun-play ahead of you."

Pete, head under his pony, drawing the cinch, blew my trumpet for
me--and his own.

"I taught him, boss--I was his professor," he said, "and I certify," he
withdrew his head, "upon him for an expert gun-man."

All this was just before supper but there was no waiting for us. We hit
the trail at once (with some grub that the boss rustled for us) and
camped half way. I remember Pete's phrase as we sat by our fire there.
"A hoss, a blanket, and a hobble is enough house-furnishings for any man
in this here brief life." He did not often say things like that, but
when he did he felt what he said, and it was, I think, the capacity to
feel thus that made Pete and me such friends.

The next day was but a quarter gone when we came whooping into Black
Kettle, setting a-dancing several restive ponies, some at the
hitching-posts, some at the hotel verandah, two before the store. No
sooner had we arrived than we saw the Colonel running to us, and we rode
toward him.

"How do, boys?" he saluted us. "You come to join the posse?"

"Sure!"

"Well, boys," he said, "you want to be posted on this here side-issue
regarding that picnic--prompt. The Sheriff of Sonora wanted a man who
knew the Hole in the Wall country. Apache Kid heard of all the ongoings,
and he would have it that he was the man to show the way. No reasoning
with him----"

"Gee-whiz! But the Sheriff will recognise him," said Pete.

"He says the Sheriff and him never met."

"That don't signify," said Pete. "Ain't his description out? And them
little ear-rings he wears--it's the only thing I don't like in
him--makes him some reminiscent of a Greaser--they'll----"

"He's taken them off, and he's grown a beard. His yarn is that he got
hurt in the corrals with a locoed bull but is now healed sufficient to
lead the posse----"

A man with a chubby face, but scowling face too, sitting his pony with
very military seat, rode up to us and swept back a buckskin coat he wore
so that a little badge showed, with a flash, on his left breast.

"You boys for the posse?" he asked, reining up.

"Yes, Sheriff," said Pete.

"Where you from?"

"Triangle. Henry and Stells."

"Well I reckon we're about ready."

"You got a guide?" asked Pete.

"Yes; I got a tracker from Lincoln Reserve, and I got a man called
Charlie Carryl who knows the Hole in the Wall country."

"Oh! He got his arm broke with a locoed steer in the round-ups, didn't
he?" asked Pete.

"Yes, that's the man. There he is on the verandah right now." And
"Charlie Carryl" appeared with his left arm in a sling. Beside him was
the Indian tracker.

The Indian amazed me. He wore a starched shirt. Don't jump on me and say
I should call it "boiled shirt."

If the West called such an article a "glitter-shirt" I might use the
phrase. They were great starchers on the Lincoln Reserve. The mission
laundry had taught one art which appealed to them strongly; the glamour
of the stiff, starched front of a white shirt was over the whole
Reserve. So the Indian tracker came forth to trail the horse-thieves
with a starched shirt showing below his broidered deer-skin coat, and
waistcoat--an ordinary cloth waistcoat, store bought, and sewn all over
with bead designs after the style of the swastika.

We rode over to the "Palace" at the Sheriff's heels. I was quite
prepared not to "know" Apache Kid and made a mask of my face.

"How do, Charlie!" said Pete, looking up at the Apache Kid who watched
us ride along. "Your arm better?"

"On the mend," said Apache.

Yuma Bill swaggered out of the bar. I wondered if the boys at his place
had resorted to the "lottery" method of picking who was to join the
posse, or whether he had intimidated his outfit into being its
representative.

One thing was clear. The thought flashed into my head at sight of that
rough diamond, Yuma Bill. It came into his head at the same moment. It
came also into Pete's. It flickered from eye to eye. Yuma twinkled it
rapidly; he could not help it when he saw us. Pete turned his head,
fastening the slackened strap over his blanket roll, and telegraphed a
quick look to me.

If there had been any fear of the Sheriff finding that he had indeed set
a thief to catch a thief when Apache Kid (for the nonce "Charlie
Carryl") became his guide, if there were any chance of the Sheriff
finding that out, and thinking of his duty, there were at least three
men in the posse who might have objections to its performance.




CHAPTER XXII

AT THE HOLE IN THE WALL


I understand how it is that soldiers are reticent about the battles in
which they have fought. As for the actual shooting of their enemies
(that is, their countries') they are as mum as if they were all
Freemasons.

The affair at the Hole in the Wall was a small matter compared with
wars, but on those who went in for it it had the same effect.

Though I have said little about how it affected me, the shooting of the
trooper at the hollow tree is a matter that I many a time wish I had
been spared. Put me in the position again, show me the treachery on that
hill-slope, and of course I would chip in again. But I would do it
mighty seriously, knowing that all my life that trooper would have to
lie spread-eagled as it were in a lumber-room of my mind. For my part,
if I had to shoot somebody, I had far rather shoot a trust-boss than a
cattle-thief!

We did not pull out of Black Kettle till two days after Pete and I
arrived there, for two men were expected from a ranch away up on the
Kettle River. The men comprising the posse were all taken from ranches
that had suffered from the gang in question. That lull of a day or two,
before starting out, was not good. It gave me time to think. I recalled
again the incident of the hollow tree. I remembered how, after the heat
of fight, I wished I had been spared taking part in the shambles side
of life. I sat staring ahead of me in the Palace bar-room, while the
voices swam away; but a hail of: "Belly up to the bar, boys!" recalled
me and, replying to that hail, I returned to the frame of mind in which
I could say to myself: "Don't you weaken now! If everybody weakened like
you a registered brand would be valueless and the world a thieves'
paradise."

Many a wild tale was swopped, during these days, of bad men and their
doings. Stories were told of the Lincoln County War, of the James
brothers, of the Dalton gang; of some man up Idaho way who was marshal,
or sheriff, or peace officer of some kind, and how it was discovered one
day that he was really boss of a gang of hold-up men, with
representatives at the stage stations. He would chalk-mark a coach in a
way his men would understand, and when it came rocking into some station
one of his men would see the mark and boot along and tell his fellows
and, on the next lap, the stage would be held up.

When it all came out the chief of that gang had a rough trail indeed, a
kind of imitation, to the best of the ability of the miners who rounded
him up, of the real thing. He was condemned to death, made a horrible
scene protesting he was too bad to die, then, giving up all hope, asked
for a strong drop that would ensure instantaneous death. He had been a
tough character, well known as a killer, but always managing to get his
enemies to pull their guns first and so, in the slang phrase, be found
guilty only of taking part in "an even break"--but the number of men he
had killed thus in "self-defence" was not small. When a peace officer
was wanted he got the job, as I say, as a man quick on the draw--which a
peace-officer must be. But "using his position erroneous," as the
narrator expressed it, he was brought to book.

Happier was the tale I heard of a peace-officer in New Mexico who ran to
earth a man wanted across the line in Texas, walked into his house and
held him up where he stood, washing dishes! But the wanted man would not
throw up his hands--and the peace-officer did not desire to shoot him.
They had a rough and tumble. Then the wanted man leaped through the
window, but not to escape. He only went out by the window instead of the
door because the peace-officer blocked the door that gave on to the
passage-way. The "bad man" simply plunged out by the window and then
dived back indoors, and doubled upstairs for his rifle. The marshal,
running out of the kitchen, called to him to surrender, but he had
already reached the stairs and he rushed on upwards. The marshal ran
after him; but, in the marshal's words (as heard, when he told the
story, by Panamint Pete): "My deputy was a Mexican--all I could rope in
at the time to help me--and he had no convictions of sentiment in such
doings; so he just naturally runs in--from where I posts him
outside--and bends a gun, and shoots that man that I was aiming to take
back intact to Texas." That marshal was a good man.

The members of this parcel of cattle-stealers that we were going to find
were all known as "bad men." For one Apache Kid you have fifty merely
brutal murderers. To-day the "bad man" type is to be found chiefly in
cities. He is practically eliminated from the ranges, and from the parts
still left wilderness. But even in the time of my narrative, a decade
ago, the "bad men" in the Western States, from Montana to Mexico, were
as much drawn from cities as from the frontier towns. Even earlier the
city-bred "bad men" were abroad. They came to mining camps chiefly,
card-players perhaps, and graduated by shooting some drunken player. Had
they stayed in town they would have been hooligans, after the pattern of
the fellow who was the cause of my flight from the old country--or even
less worthy, perhaps.

But the men that we were after were not "boot-black toughs," as the West
calls such characters who have graduated through picking pockets,
knuckle-dusting--in groups--late homing merchants in alleys, breaking
open freight cars, to shooting clerk and teller in some small mining
camp. They were of the old order that hangs on in the West here and
there.

We had word of them from a ranch three days after we left Black Kettle;
and they seemed, according to the account of the man who had seen them,
to be still heading for that tangle of mountains called the Hole in the
Wall--a name given to more than one such natural hiding-place. I saw,
only the other day, that a party of horse-thieves were standing off a
posse in a "Hole in the Wall" in Wyoming, and making old settlers feel
as if the old days were not dead, but unhappily revived. "The old days"
make exciting reading sometimes, but----

At a ranch on the headwaters of Horse Thief Creek (which might well be
re-named now, as the horse-thief in question passed in his checks to
Peter there these eighteen years ago) we had word of them again. They
had a good start of us; but they knew they were to be followed. They
knew that, with the arrest of their chief "fence" (which is the straight
word for the ranch-owner who was negotiating the sales of their
mavericked animals), their game was up. When the men who are doing the
work on the field are corralled first, the "mandarins" (they who are
managing the business side) can prepare to look innocent and set about
destroying proofs of complicity and preparing alibis. They need not take
flight; if they have a big pull the men who are doing the dirty work may
pay the penalty alone. Even if the captured "underlings" blab, the
"mandarins" may get off, and not only get off, but raise a clamour of
cries of "Shame!" that they were ever suspected. But when the "mandarin"
is corralled then those who play his cards for him had better seek new
pastures.

So had these men argued--and, instead of leaving the State on the
instant, separating, taking flight for Mexico, or farther, as many men
in trouble in the Western States have done, they headed for the Hole in
the Wall. Perhaps their idea was to lie there until the storm might blow
over. Perhaps their idea was to send out some member thence to a
settlement, to find out how deeply they were implicated. Perhaps--but it
matters little now what their design was, or whether an element of panic
influenced them.

We left the ranch where we received last news of them, and struck their
trail where a cowboy had seen them. At that ranch we were all supplied
with fresh horses and went on eagerly, now on the actual trail. Eight
days after leaving Black Kettle we camped at the spring that is the
beginning of Horse Thief Creek. Away beyond, a steep triangle, a V of
dense brush fills the valley's end; to left are cliffs striped with
strange belts of colours; to right are "bad lands" running up into
turrets and bastions that stand melancholy and weird against the last
light of day.

It was a gloomy and silencing place. We made a camp there by the little
spring, where water-spiders walked on the water and scuttled from the
dipping-cans. That night we lit no fire; for Apache said that if we lit
one it would be seen on the cliffs ahead. I remember how the Sheriff
looked at him and said:

"Shouldn't we spread out lest they try to break back?"

"They'll not break back. They'll go farther in," said Apache.

"You know these parts very well?" the Sheriff suggested.

"I prospected clean through here once," said Apache. "That's not a wall
up there--that's a pass all right. They're in that black bit--woods."

"You've done other work, then, beside riding the range," said the
Sheriff.

"Sure!" said Apache, looking at the Sheriff quickly, and then looking
away as if these questions held no menace for him, and he began to hum
the air of "The Spanish Cavalier"; he sang lightly, and smiled at the
Sheriff as he sang, posing gaily, as if he held a guitar on his crossed
knees, and as he did so the Sheriff smiled back. We who were in the know
about this ex-prospector cow-man, Charlie Carryl, could not look at each
other. Men get too amazingly alert to read every sign, when thrown
together in places as solitary as these.

The scene was laid for tapping thought-waves--silence and bad-land
sky-lines, and no fire--just staring full moon flooding the valley and
we and the horses clustered in the trees that grow around that spring.

Too often I see again those black, horrible, quiet pines in that
valley's end to which we came before sun-up, for Apache advised that the
crossing of the valley's end be undertaken at night. We rested only from
about six (when we came to the spring) till midnight. Then on again.
And by four A.M. we were in the border of the timber.

It appeared at first, that if the cattle-lifters had left a watch at
that part to keep an eye on the valley for pursuit, that rear-guard had
not seen us. But we did not know for certain. He might have been there,
might have seen us, indistinctly, crossing the flats, and already ridden
on after his cronies to warn them. But Apache thought that either that
probable rear-guard had not seen us, or else they had all pushed clear
through. For once Apache was wrong. Neither of these methods (which
would doubtless have seemed the only two to choose between had he been
of the flying party) had been adopted by them.

"There is a place right here," he said, "where they could work a 'stand
off'--but farther on there is a better one."

"How far is the better place for them?" asked the Sheriff.

"It's a good couple of days through these hills. But I have a feeling
that this would satisfy them; and if you are willing, Sheriff, I would
suggest that we leave the horses and prospect into the first place."

So we passed on, leaving a guard with the horses, crept away through
fading, gloomy alleys between the boles, feeling the queer quiet of the
place. After an hour of this creeping advance a flicker of light showed
on a tree, and we halted. So they had not left a rear-guard!

"They're there," said Apache, "in the dip. Now, Sheriff, you get ready
for action."

"We hold them up, boys, you remember that," said the Sheriff. "You just
back my play."

"Right!"

"Right, Sheriff!"

We crept on.

Crack went a rotten branch on which some one had set his foot--a crack
that seemed to reverberate from the whole dip into which we advanced
toward the flickering light. And immediately came a rushing of feet and
the extinguishment of the fire. We heard water flung and wood sizzle.
Then the Sheriff's voice:

"We're too many for you. Give it up!"

Then crack! crack! crack! of Winchesters--Biff! biff! of revolvers.

It was just faint morning light. I fired no shot. Several spent no
shell. For this was no moving-picture hold-up of cattle-rustlers, and
none of us were out to shoot our own men (the way Wild Bill shot his
deputy in Abilene--an accident easily understandable, but a thing that
must have given Wild Bill many a moment of remorse).

The Sheriff kept shouting: "Give it up! Surrender! Throw up your hands!"

But there was no surrender on the part of these rustlers. Their horses,
scared by the shooting, were stampeding through the brush. I thought at
first sound of the horses that the cattle-rustlers were trying to
escape. But they were not doing that. They were still right where we
came on them--putting up a fight in the dip, knowing that back of them
were only the caon walls, and that there was only one way out--into our
midst.

Of course, after the first firing, we guessed there was going to be
parley. But after the first fusilade of shots had passed, and, in
response to the Sheriff's shout for a surrender, a second began, the
last hope of rounding them up faded. We were down among the bushes,
creeping forward. Our foremost men fired a return to that renewed
fusilade. I could hear bullets plug into tree stems. When one of our men
called on the name of God in a voice like a voice of remorse, I used,
instead of more care, less care in my advance, got up from hands and
knees, and ran forward on the heels of the Sheriff and Apache who were
in the lead.

There was now no fear of shooting up our own party. We were all now
looking down into the dip; and the darts of flame, when the rustlers
fired, gave us their location easily. I clapped down beside a shadow
that I saw was that of Apache. At the same moment a voice yelled a curse
at us from the bushes across the dip. Apache fired into the bush whence
the voice had come, and we heard the cry of the man there: "That's got
me!" in a desperate voice.

"I said I would get you, Buck Johnson!" shouted Apache.

Another shot, from a man beside me, further decreased the number of
flashes from the bushes opposite us. All this seemed to take place in
ten minutes, but I think it must have been a deal longer than that, and
I take it that both sides were making sure not to fire wild, aiming
always where a flash came from, or where, by peering and watching, they
thought they saw a bulk in a bush that might be a man and not a shadow.
I do know that a stump of log, beside the extinguished fire of the
rustlers, was observed afterwards, by the Sheriff, to be chipped and
riddled by bullets, and several of our men acknowledged to having taken
good aim for it.

But why I say I think it must have taken longer than I imagined at the
time is because, as I peered ahead and kept as calm as possible,
determined to do no wild shooting, I saw, as I thought, a rifle thrust
up from a bush, and I blazed at it--taking no sight of course, sight
being out of the question in that light, but just, as they say, lining
for it--and then knew it was a tree branch at which I had fired by the
way that, after my shot, though the bush flurried and fell still, the
projecting little line of black was just as before. And still peering at
the place, I saw it all more distinct, lighter; the bushes seemed to
rise up and look at us.

There was dead silence. Everybody ceased firing. It was like waking from
a dream. I had a moment of wanting to yell; and then, up before me,
something rose. I looked--and saw the Sheriff's hat on the top of his
rifle. There was no response. He stood boldly up. No response. We could
hear the little tinkle-tinkle, bubble-bubble of the spring in the dip.

One by one we rose and followed the Sheriff. The smell of gunpowder
drifted away. The scent of the balsam triumphed again, and we none could
look at the other in the morning light.

All this gained a mere three lines in the Eastern papers. In the Western
papers it had its half column--and I was glad the names of the posse
were not given. "A posse under Sheriff Lincoln Smith" was quite
sufficient.

When we came back again to Black Kettle, there occurred a droll incident
that not even the Western papers mentioned.

We rode our horses into the "square" and half of the posse dismounted.
It was close on the supper hour and we were hungry men. The last grub we
had was beans and bacon, bought from a ranch where we had gone for
provisions on the slower journey home. And that had been all eaten at
noon.

Then we all waited expectant, for Sheriff Smith had not dismounted; and
we expected, from his sudden stern demeanour, that some legal form of
disbanding us whom he had sworn in was now to be the card.

"Say!" he said. "The train comes in about now. I reckon I might as well
go right aboard and get back to Lone Tree and report."

He glanced oddly at Apache.

"Oh, better stop over to-night. Sheriff," one said.

"You can ride over in the morning," said another.

"I wouldn't stay the night anyhow," said Sheriff Smith. "I got to get
back. This passear has taken long enough. It's a question of taking the
train now or--I guess the porter will have some crackers and fruit if
there ain't no dining-car. But--" his horse edged nearer to Apache's.

Apache had not dismounted. Neither had Yuma. I had.

Apache's pony became restive and edged away. Yuma Bill's pony became
restive and edged between. Mine responded to a pressure of my hand on
his neck and turned round between Yuma and the Sheriff. Thus two horses
were between Apache and the Sheriff. The air was electric.

"Duty is duty, boys!" snapped the Sheriff. He looked at us all, with a
puzzled face. "Duty may sometimes be hell; but it's got to be done," he
said.

The horses moved in a little dance.

"No, Sheriff--you can't do it," came the Colonel's quiet voice.

The Sheriff looked round, and then back--at us all--at Apache Kid--at
the Colonel standing there with a hand resting on the hitching-pole, the
other caressing his beard.

"I should hate to do it, but--" the Sheriff began.

"You ain't goin' to," said Yuma Bill.

"No--you can't do it," said Panamint Pete from the other side of the
Sheriff.

"Make a fresh deal of it," said Apache, looking at Smith keenly, with
that queer twinkle in his eyes. "Take the train back--I hear it
screaming now--I've got good ears, Sheriff. You will be happier
yourself. Make a fresh deal. Go right back to Lone Tree on the train--or
by the trail if you prefer. It's only a few hours' ride by trail. Then
start a fresh game."

Sheriff Smith looked at his pony's ears, meditative. Then he raised his
eyes to Apache again. He looked at Apache's left arm in its soiled
sling.

"Well," he said, "for once I guess I'll be man first and sheriff after.
But," he turned to us, "you boys got to keep this quiet."

"That's all right!" we said. The one or two who were not "in the know,"
and had not recognised Apache Kid, looked puzzled. Looking at them I saw
light dawning on their faces as they scrutinised "Charlie Carryl," and I
saw from the other expression, that followed upon the one of
astonishment, that they were of the Sheriff's mind as it was now.

The train came in.

The Sheriff did not take it. "I'll disband you boys," said he, "and then
we'll all eat supper." He swung from his horse. "It's all right," he
snapped and nodded. Nobody cheered. We were all moved beyond cheering.

He stayed for supper and hit the trail for Lone Tree later. It was a
very strained, excited moment when he thanked us all, we all clustered
before the Palace, and then turned to Apache and said:

"Thank you especially--Mr. Carryl!"

Then he swung to his saddle, and we didn't even cheer then.

We passed indoors anon, to drink the Sheriff's health, when the dust of
his going fell--and a little later Apache was missed.

"Where's Apache Kid?"

"Dunno."

We looked at each other. Then we looked at the bar-keep.

"The house is on Apache Kid for to-night," he said. "What will you
drink, gents?"

"Where's the Colonel?" was the next cry.

"Where's the Colonel?"

"Here I am, gents. I was selling a hoss."

"Oh!" we cried. Some winked. Some nodded.

Nobody said anything beyond that "Oh!"

We all waited on in Black Kettle over night and of course we all were up
in the morning, bright and early, calculating to see the Sheriff back.

"He rode home all right last night. He as much as passed his word,"
figured Yuma, over breakfast. "I thought that he would ride up and touch
the court-house wall with his forefinger and then wheel and come surging
back--metaphorically speaking. That sheriff would never cold-deck no
man," and he selected a wooden toothpick.

"Yes--I guess he'll be back early with a fresh hoss and that Injun
tracker, reckoning on Apache burning the trail prompt. He knows he gets
no assistance here."

But the Sheriff did not arrive. We waited on, all the late posse.
But Sheriff Smith had not arrived by dinner-time. We waited on
anxiously. Even poker failed to pass the time. The bar-keep and the
proprietor of the Palace wrestled with the intestines of the damaged
nickel-in-the-slot hurdy-gurdy and succeeded in urging it to sing again.
It sang with just a slight cough at the end of bars; but it failed to
cheer--and failed even to irritate Yuma Bill.

Supper-time came--and no Sheriff.

"He's swearing in a new posse," somebody suggested, "and volunteers is
tardy."

"Well--job lost or no job lost, I got to stay on here till he comes
back," said one.

But the Sheriff did not come that night. Sheriff Lincoln Smith, indeed,
never came to Black Kettle again.




CHAPTER XXIII

A DEPUTY SHERIFF HITS THE TRAIL


There is no doubt that machinery is very useful. Personally I have no
use for machinery. From automobiles to alarm clocks I bar mechanism.
Once, when I was up in British Columbia and could not get a job
cow-punching there, I went to work in a saw-mill as a yard-teamster.
They woke us with a steam-whistle. So on the third morning I quit. If
the old pony express had not been such a temptation to hold-up men I
could wish that the land West of Missouri had remained "The Great
American Desert" of the earlier maps, and had known no railway--only the
stage coach (in spite of all the aches it gives) and the pony express.
And such is my distaste for telegraphs that, when I heard that the
telegraph people had substituted steel poles for wooden ones over the
Wind River Plains, because in bad winters, when teamsters were caught in
blizzards there, they used to cut up the telegraph poles for firewood, I
wanted to get up a signed protest. What was a quick message running
along the wires, what was a little money spent on telegraph poles
compared with the life of a teamster?

Progress has no use for me--which is more humble than saying that I have
little use for Progress.

But we might have stayed on longer, uselessly, than we did at Black
Kettle, waiting the return of the Sheriff, if Scotty had not finally
been unable to stand the strain and so got on to the man at Lone Tree on
his "instrument." He had enough "savvy" to make it "just for a friendly
chat, seeing that things are so quiet."

And the Lone Tree man did not need to be asked questions. He began, as
soon as he was called up, to ask what we had done to Sheriff Smith.

"I don't know," Scotty replied. "Why do you ask that?"

"He has quit," was the reply.

"What do you mean by 'quit' exactly?"

"He has resigned his position. He says he has held the office long
enough and should make room for another man."

"Oh! What's that for?"

"Nobody knows--unless he just means what he says. But he has been
successful enough. Maybe he is annoyed at wiping out that gang instead
of bringing them in. He is a humane person."

"Yes, maybe that's it."

And with this news Scotty came surging back to the hotel.

We toasted, with great admiration, Sheriff Lincoln Smith; and then, one
by one, or two by two, went home--each to our own work.

Apache Kid dislocated things quite enough without bringing everything to
a standstill. And when we returned, Pete and I, to the Triangle, we had
to tell and re-tell our experience till we were sorry we ever started
out. When I was told off to ride over into Walsh County, and help to
herd back to the range a bunch of our strays, from the round-up there, I
hoped no one at the Walsh round-up would know I had been in the chase to
the Hole in the Wall. But they did know--and I was pestered beyond
words. So it was good to be back again on the road, sitting my bronc
alone, holding the night herd, or falling asleep under quiet stars, on
the return trip.

Pete I did not see for some time again (not till the round-ups were
over, and extra hands, hired for them, were gone), as he, thanks to his
cutting-out capacity, was over at other round-ups. I verily believe he
recognised cows by their faces as often as not and had no need to look
at either brand or ear marks.

The extra hands drifted off; where, who knows? It is always a mystery to
me whither they do go, whence they come. The harvesters who flood the
wheat country for six weeks, and then depart, are also a mystery. What
do they do the other forty-six weeks of the year?

After the extra hands had gone, and the round-ups were over, there came
a lull; and Pete, who was, as they say, a man with an "itching foot,"
fired me with a desire to go up to the cowboy annual sports either at
Cheyenne or Denver.

"They are sure good for a man if he thinks he is a rider--good and
humbling, and give a man something to live up to," he said. "I reckon on
the strength of our services to the country the boss would be willing
to let us lay off--so we don't need to feel homeless and lonesome while
sitting around watching the diversions in the arena. I likes, when I'm
enjoying myself, to be able to picture, between the stunts, a bunk-house
somewheres where I know I'm going back again. I likes to see in my
mind's eye a certain particular range of hills, or special secluded
coulees, or some familiar bush a-waving on the top of a draw, and say:
'There is my own, my native land,' and after these diversions are
through I pikes back there."

And he was able to allow himself that solace, for the boss was willing.

So, in a few days, we were mixing with the crowds, jostling the sunburnt
men of the ranges, and the pale-faced of the city who gather to see the
annual riding contest when the men of the sage-brush ride for the
championship of the world, and a belt. That high-sounding phrase,
"championship of the world," does not appeal to me very much. It is
amazing in what championships the best man does not necessarily win. I
have seen an Indian "crease" a wild horse--that is, fire a shot at a
long range and shoot him in the loose flesh of the neck, so that the
horse is stunned for long enough to be saddled. And when I have told of
the incident to a fat know-all in England he has told me:

"Oh--it's very picturesque, no doubt; but these fellows can't shoot.
When they come to shooting at a target with the ordinary militia they
are no good."

I doubt if an Indian has ever shot with the militia at a target. And
even target-shooting has its tricks, and when target-shooters come to a
contest--well, there is a notable case (of which, perhaps, the less said
the better) where the winner had his cartridges specially made, the
powder weighed in jeweller's scales, every charge exactly the same. When
a contest becomes close a little thing like that is going to count.

Then there is another case of a cup-winner, in another sport, taking
cramp and being massaged while his adversary stood by and got a chill.
The massaged and losing one began fresh when his winning opponent was
really jaded. And he won the cup, thanks to that massage which freshened
him and thanks to the chill that stiffened the other man. Such little
things also count. In the West that is called "cold-decking a man"; and
however the sharp East may see these things the West does not wholly
admire.

"Politics" and "Sport" are all like that; and I have no use for either.
I can ride a horse for the love of it. I can shoot for the love of
it--but "sport" is often weariness and vexation of spirit to
participator and beholder. I could work up no enthusiasm over the
winning of the belt. But I was on my feet, many times, waving my hat
over some brilliant recovery in the saddle, and I found myself sitting
sneering like a jade idol at some piece of "stunt" or swagger.

I have seen a crowd jump on the chest of an umpire at a football
match--I have heard the recrimination at a lawn tennis match. To Hades
with "sport" so far as I am concerned. There is a kink in me somewhere,
a spirit of "not wanting." I have seen men of my calibre coaxed into a
horse race at the ranch--and do nothing; and yet, on the same horse, at
the round-up, I have seen the same men doing better work and riding
better than the race winner. I have tried to take the buck out of a bad
pony in the corrals, and been thrown. I have mounted as cross a horse to
go drive a herd twenty miles, and nary a buck. I prefer to see a
cow-puncher pot a grey wolf that is worrying a calf, an Indian crease an
outlaw horse, a prospector bring down a duck for his dinner, to hearing
your "Oh pshaw, very picturesque" person talk about the militia at their
targets.

I fear that there is a good deal of Apache Kid in me!

Civilisation seems to me a collection of people who, on the one hand,
call in the police if a burglar comes along and, on the other, of
persons who pay some tough to buy dynamite to blow up the buildings of
their rivals so that they can corner the market. To see people fighting
for a strap in a street car nearly makes me run amok, makes me hunger to
pull a gun and herd them in, one at a time, at the step, as if they were
cattle.

I hope there is elbow room in the Great Beyond--elbow room and no
targets--only a sufficiency of game, some mountains to break the
monotony, some prairies to ride over--and no patronising angel to come
along and, when he sees that a few of us can ride well, offer us a belt
for the best rider. Belts are like money. I suppose money was instituted
to save swopping a sack of wheat, or a horse, for bacon and beans, so to
speak--so many tokens, so much wheat--so many tokens, so much horse; but
now we never think of the horse and the wheat, only of the tokens, the
money.

Some such thoughts were jumping about in my brain as I cannoned off one
man on to another, on the crowded side-walk, and apologised to both and
tried to dodge a third--wondering how people managed to steer clear on
side-walks. We were on our way to our hotel, and as we came to the
street in which it was situated I saw before us a man whose pliant back
was familiar.

We went straight into the dining-room, choosing a corner table, and
ordered dinner. And then I looked round, and my eyes fell on a man who
was entering the room, and I recognised Yuma Bill.

Up I rose and shouted: "Yuma!"

No attention.

"Yuma!" I yelled.

No attention.

He moved on to the counter and then turned lightly and, with his back to
it, surveyed me. His face lit and he came over to us, held out his hand,
pump-handled us wildly, and sat down with us. As he did so some one
brushed behind me and dropped a paper before me on the table, and
looking over my shoulder I saw the man, whose back I had seemed to know,
going out of the door.

On the paper was written:

"Room 17. Come up--all of you. I want to ask you something. Apache."

But we were not to know what he wanted to ask.

I remember how, after dinner, we had our meal tickets punched, Pete and
I; and how we wrangled over which of the tickets was to be punched for
Yuma; Yuma crying out that the only way was for him to pay his own. The
meals were twenty-five cents each to us, on the tickets, but along the
bottom of the tickets were figures for "extra dishes"--fifteen cent, and
ten cent ones. I remember how Pete and I tossed a quarter over the
matter, and how I won and had a fifteen mark punched on my ticket, and
Pete had a ten cent one punched on his, to the tune of much mock
solemnity over such petty fooling.

Then we strayed upstairs--Pete, Yuma Bill, and I--and something
happened.

Pete and I shared a room--number 10. I had invited Yuma up to see it,
handing across to him, as we rose from the table, the paper that Apache
had dropped before me.

"If you've never put up at this house before," said I, "you may as well
stroll up with us and see upstairs."

So up we went, passed room 10, and on along the corridor to number 17.
Pete was in the lead. I was behind with Yuma.

I saw Pete raise his head, as he came to room 17, in a curious jerk. It
was a movement of a man of the open, hearing something dubious, and
going on guard. Yuma and I intuitively stopped. We had been chatting as
we came along the corridor, but ceased abruptly--not only our chatter,
but moved more slowly.

The door of number 17 was open. Pete looked in at the hinge and dropped
his hand to his hip, and then missed his belt, discarded in the
civilisation of the city. Yuma dipped oddly into his tail-coat, a heavy
swallow-tail, such as is esteemed highly by so many range-men, and marks
the occasion festive. He drew forth a Smith and Webly and thrust it into
Pete's hand. Then Pete, gun in hand, backed on to our toes and, with his
left hand behind him, thrust us back, turned his head slightly, and
whispered: "Keep talking, you!"

"Oh! Let me see," said Yuma in a great voice, "which I suppose the hotel
is plumb full, with the annual being on?"

And back, back we went--to room 10, and backed in there.

"What is it?" asked Yuma.

Pete turned fully and said:

"A gent in a blue suit, with a little silver star on his left breast,
and a big silver-mounted gun in his fist, sitting in the chair--that's
what it is."

"Oh! Waiting for Apache Kid."

"Well--where is Apache?"

A door at our end of the corridor slammed, as if in answer to our
question, and Apache passed along the corridor whistling, with ruffled
hair, and a towel in his hands.

"Come in here, damn you," whispered Pete. Apache started, and was inside
our room on the instant.

Hurriedly Pete told him of the peace officer in his room. We made no
attempt to greet him, or to ask him what he was doing in the city, why
he risked visiting the sports.

"Oh!" he said, and paused, and gave a frown of thought. "Is the window
open?"

"Can't call to mind." Pete considered. "Yes--for sure--I remember the
little dinky cover on the table in the window was waving in the wind."

Apache walked to our window and looked out.

"No," he said, "I'm not a Rocky Mountain sheep. I wonder--I wonder----"

"What?"

He sat gently down on the edge of the bed and began to towel his hair.

"I see your arm is working again," said Yuma.

"Eh! What? Oh yes, sure! I wonder----"

"Can we help you out of it?" said Pete.

"Well, what I'm wondering is this: you remember the pardon?"

"Sure," said Yuma.

"Yap--heerd of it," said Pete.

"I saw it," said I.

"Well, I went to wash in my shirt, and I left my jacket in there.
Now----"

"By heck! You're up against it if the pardon is in your jacket."

"Well, say!" said Yuma. "This ain't a matter for debate. This here is a
matter for prompt action."

"Lend me your gun," said Apache. "Mine's in there too."

Yuma held his hand and Pete returned the gun to him. Then Yuma handed it
over to Apache Kid.

"Easy now," I said. "You've to get away again without making a fresh
crime."

"Sure," said Pete.

"It's dead easy," said Yuma. "I'll do it."

"Do what?" asked Apache.

"I'll run along and shout at the door: 'Say--you looking for Apache Kid?
He's in the washhouse. He's climbin' out the washhouse winder on to the
roof. He's on to you.' Out he comes at my excited hail, and then--" Yuma
looked at Pete, at me.

Pete wagged his head, bent to our joint "grip," and pulled it from under
the bed; produced two guns, took one, and gave me the other.

Yuma held out his hand to Apache for his gun to be returned.

"Now," said Apache, "I'm the only one shy a gun."

"Well--you want to be," said Yuma.

"No--no--look here! Yuma--Yuma--," Apache began, but Yuma was gone with
his gun in his hand.

We heard him run along the corridor, and then:

"Say! You looking for Apache Kid?"

"He'll raise the whole house!" moaned Pete.

"He's in the lavatory! He's going over the winder!" we heard. "He's----"

We stood at our door, pushing Apache back, all trembling with the
excitement before action. Along came feet.

"Well, I got one thing I want anyhow, if I lose him--" and level with
our door was the peace officer, and the feet of Yuma Bill sounded after
him.

Out we leapt and crashed on the top of that marshal's deputy. It was as
if I was back in the corrals wrestling a maverick. And he shouted too.

"Don't bleat!" growled Yuma, and took his head in both hands and beat it
on the floor, yanked it up and smashed it down.

"Don't kill him!" Pete said, and I said--I forget what now. We hauled
the deputy abruptly into our room. Yuma turned him over and he and
Apache ransacked the pockets.

"Here's the pardon," said Apache--opened it, looked at it. "Yes, that's
right. Not that it's of much use to me now----"

"Reckons this is where we quits," said Yuma, standing up. "By heck! I
did hate using a man that way. Never did it before--but if a man has
wax on his finger-nails, and you can't plug him, then the only
alternative is----"

"To stack your cards," said Pete.

"Sure."

"He'll be coming round--and you'll have to do it again," said I.

Pete looked long at Yuma.

"Yuma," he said, "if it's a fair question--was it you held the hosses at
Antelope Creek on the night----"

Yuma looked at Apache--Apache at Yuma. There was nothing said.

Pete turned to me.

"Apache and Yuma quits," he said. "We rescues the marshal's man. We
hears sounds of a struggle, and we comes to his aid. We acts
missionaries and Good Samaritans."

Yuma looked at me, and then at Pete. Then he said:

"You forgets that Bucket has been suspected some. Did you ever write
that letter----"

I took his arm and turned him about.

"Git!" I said. "And you too, Apache!"

We gripped hands; and five minutes later Pete and I were listening to
the silence in the corridor, Pete and I alone, waiting for the first
sign of returning consciousness on the part of the deputy--when we would
dash water on him and begin our play-acting.

Pete closed our "grip," and shoved it under the bed again while we
waited, grim and thoughtful.

"He don't seem to be very eager about returning to the land of the
living," he said.

"Shall we dash water on him now?" I asked, feeling very jumpy.

Pete frowned and considered.

"We got to give Apache and Yuma every show of a start," he said.

He puckered his brows at the man on the floor. Then he sat back and gave
a very foolish cackling little laugh, as if he was a trifle demented.

"By heck!" said he, and put his hand down to feel the man's heart, knelt
there, still laughing horribly.

"By heck!" he said. "Now ain't this comical? He's plumb dead!"




CHAPTER XXIV

ROOM THIRTEEN


I noticed Pete fingering his moustache in a most savage and twitching
manner.

"Pooh!" I thought. "He's distraught. Now is the time to show the big
capacity; now is the time to show the capacity for calm in moments when
some people would get 'rattled.'"

And then I found that I was plucking at my moustache in the same way.

Pete glanced at me.

"When you are cool and collected," he said, "we'll pow-wow and then
act."'

"Cool and collected!" I cried. "Stop pulling your moustache. You'd let a
fool see you were in a corner."

"Was I pulling my moustache?"

"I think we'd better get him out again, and then walk down and tell the
proprietor that we've been trying to bring him round."

Pete looked out into the quiet corridor, nodded to me, and we lifted the
body, carried it out stealthily and laid it down again outside our door.

"Now," he said, "you be throwin' water on him. I'm off. This is not the
kind of play a man can think about too long before his leading card. If
I don't start right now----"

"Wait a bit," I said. "Did we see any one on the way up? No--no we
didn't. Pete--we're going down together; and if there's nobody in the
vestibule we're going to walk right out--and go and see to-day's riding
at the arena, and come back to supper full of talk of the riding--and
nothing else--till we're told about this."

He pulled his moustache, then perceived what he was doing and stroked
his chin instead.

"And if there's somebody in the vestibule?" he asked.

"Then we don't run chances. We go to the proprietor and say:
'Proprietor! I want to speak to you a minute'; and we bring him up here.
Wait a bit! Wait a bit! Where will Yuma and Apache be? If we could get
them back! Apache I mean----"

"Get him--Oh sure! I see. You think this marshal was playing a lone
hand? No--I think it's as well Apache pulled his freight. But where is
he liable to be? I don't know. Nobody knows now. Is that floor right in
there? Look at it. Look at it reasonable and sedate, Bucket, and ask
yourself is it all right."

"It's all right," said I.

"You ain't looking at it calm and cold."

"Yes--it's all right."

"No blood--no teeth or anything?"

"No----"

"We'll git down."

Down we went, and found nothing but the stove in the vestibule and a
large spittoon keeping it company. The side door, giving into the
restaurant, was closed. So we went straight out on to the side-walk. No
loafing porter--nobody below belonging to the hotel. We strolled off.
But we did not speak. Like automatons we projected ourselves to the
showground--and there found Yuma Bill!

"Hullo, boys!" he hailed us. "Going in again?"

"Where is he?" I said under my breath.

"Eh?"

"Where is he? You know."

"A. K.?"

"Yap."

"Quit! Why?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Me! I've come to see the riding stunts!" said Yuma airily.

Pete said:

"We'd better get inside. Tail on there, and talk about hosses till we
get through."

Of course I imagined that every other man at the gates was sleuth of
some kind. Behind me, I heard some men who had just arrived on our
heels.

"Bit hot in town, ain't it? I just run into a murder," one said.

"Where was it?" asked another.

"Oh, some man from Montana got too much liquor in him, and he started to
shoot up a bar-keep because he wouldn't serve him no more."

I was not interested in that case!

"There's a lot of toughs in town," I heard next. "They brings discredit
on the boys from the ranges. Same class that follows up travelling
shows--toughs--just the lowest rung, they are. Always around if there's
a fair, or a show--watch your pockets in this here crowd--I hear there's
some trouble at the hotel where I am."

I gave anxious ear again. I could almost imagine I recognised his voice
as the voice of a man who was putting up at the hotel!

"Oh! Anybody killed?"

"No--nothing desperate that-away. A sneak thief got up in the bedrooms.
Took away some jewels. Well! A man don't want to leave his jewellery
laying about. There's a hotel safe, ain't there?"

Yuma, ahead, was saying to Pete:

"No, sir--they rides with the hackamore only, and no riding on spurs is
allowed, and no buckin' straps of no kind."

We were through into the grounds, climbing down to seats, and presently
were practically alone.

"Look here, Yuma, for heaven's sake!" I said. "Don't you know where
Apache could be found? We have something to post him on."

"What's that?"

"That man that was waiting for him. You killed him, Yuma."

Yuma said nothing. But he raised his head and his jaw dropped, and his
eyes went wide.

"And you two? What did you do?" he asked thickly.

"We did the best--we left him lying in the corridor."

"Say! And sneaked out?" he almost whispered.

"We walked out."

"Nobody around?"

"No."

He looked down between the seats to the ground below, and locked his
fingers.

"Well, it ain't no good--Apache can't be posted up on these there
developments. I guess he's a-sifting down like a comet into Mexico. What
a dern fool I was--" he paused. "Never thought of that. I ought to have
suggested doing intentional what I done by accident, and then we all
walks out----"

I was horrified for some reason, yet held my peace. But Pete turned his
head.

"No," he said to Yuma, "I ain't that kind of man. And Bucket ain't. And
I don't think you are, if it comes to the bit."

"No," said Yuma, "you're right. Which I am not. I ain't no garrotter. No
more is Apache Kid."

He sat staring at a horse that had come ploughing into the arena with
four men hanging to it. "Well, partners, I guess none of us will hear
more of Apache Kid again. Damn him! He's always making trouble. What
does he want to go and raise a whole country for so that all the boys,
who ever rode the range in the lo-cality, keeps on giving him a show?"

I heard a shout, and then a roar of:

"Leather! Leather! Touched leather!"

Evidently the competitor down there in the arena was barred.

The same thought came to us all at that shout--that we must watch the
riding; and so there we sat staring ahead of us down at the arena--each
thinking his own thoughts, with the Apache Kid for the king-bolt of
them.

I remember little of that day's riding. I look back on it all as little
as I can; and my worst nightmare is when, in sleep, I walk again into
the hotel at which we put up. Not that there was, in the event, any
cause for us to trouble. We were never suspected. I think that the body
being at our door was even in our favour.

There was a kind of hush in the dining-room when we arrived. And from
the table near us we heard the news.

"Oh! That's bad! Very bad!" I said, when a man at the next table, a
nodding acquaintance by now, passed me the news.

"Give the house a bad name," said Pete, chipping in.

"Well--some folks will quit now," another opined.

"Oh--not me," said Pete. "That kind of thing ain't going to happen twice
in the one hotel. What was the motive? Murderer caught?"

"No--nobody caught. His pockets had been gone through all right."

"Have they any idea?"

"I don't know."

Another voice joined in: "They tell me it was a peace officer. They
surmise he was after somebody in the house."

As the days passed and we heard all the story from different points of
view, Pete and I kicked ourselves afresh. Apache had, of course, been in
the place under another name and, besides that, several men, in some
superstitious dislike of being in the house, simply left without a word
that very day of the murder. And, leaving without a word, they did not
pay their bills! I think, if I remember rightly, that eight (Apache
included, that is) left that floor, on which the deputy had been found,
on the day of the murder--and only two paid up for their rooms and
acknowledged why they were "pulling out." Perhaps the others did not
like to acknowledge to such a distaste. Let us give them the benefit of
the doubt and say so--perhaps they were ashamed of their squeamishness
or superstition.

The police made a special attempt to trace all these men, but only
succeeded in finding two--first the one who had explained that he didn't
like to stay on--he had been in number 11, which was opposite number 10,
and the body had been found right there, of course. He said he would
feel always as if he was stepping over it.

Second, a man was traced who had been in number 13 and said that he had
fled because he was plumb foolish to have ever taken a room 13--reckoned
the proprietor was foolish to have a room called 13--a reasonable hotel
never had a room 13. He hadn't thought of it till the murder, and he
wasn't going to stay on.

A third man came back of his own accord, all unconscious of what he was
coming to next day. He had been on what is called a "bender"; and what
he had to do on his return gave him great chagrin--he had to convoy the
police to the house where he said he had been dissipating. The
proprietor told me that he was the worst scared man in America when he
started out to identify the house and prove that he had been there, for
he was three parts drunk and he feared he could not find the house; and
then again he feared, if he did find it, and arrived with the police,
that the inmates would all swear that he had never been there, lest he
was involved in some campaign for getting them into trouble. The
chatting proprietor surreptitiously pointed out to me that pathetic
toper, and I had a sly squint at him; certainly he looked as if he had
been passing through agonies. The marks, not of drink alone, but of
terror, were on his face. His lips bulged, his eyes were bloodshot, his
hands fidgeted. I looked at myself in the long mirror that soared behind
him where he sat, and I thought: "Well, I don't look like that, anyhow."

Then in the mirror I met the eye of the chatting proprietor--and thought
it was weighing me. I lay awake all night thinking of his glance--or, I
should say, of what I read into his glance--for, as I have said, Pete
and I were, in the event, never suspected.

And indeed there came another item of news that helped to make less
suspicious the flight of those who "quit" that floor abruptly. For a
man, who had been at the far end of the corridor, after much thought,
came to the proprietor, and said he:

"I know it ain't considered according to Hoyle to lay information
concerning no female" (I expect the proprietor jumped at that), "but
I've been thinking over the suspicions that follow these men who
vamoosed from the floor where the deputy marshal cashed in, and I think
it only fair to them to narrate that the female chamber-maid for that
floor held me up there, on the morning of the said trouble, and spoke
very sharply to me--said that if she could find what man it was turned
on the water in the wash-room, and turned it off, with wet hands,
instead of filling the basin and then turning off, she would step along
and talk severely to him. She was standing there and holding up all the
gents as they came along, and explaining to them that she was here to
keep taps clean, and bedroom crockery clean, but that she was no menial.
One gentleman I made up on on the stairs, after I had been lectured,
asked me what I thought of it, and I said, 'Well, of course she is a
female, and waitress-ladies don't care for a lot of things--won't empty
more than one basin-full in a room; if a gentleman washes his hands
twice in a day in his bedroom he's got to wash next morning in his
afternoon water, and so on--little things like that and this here tap
trouble is just what one reckons to stand for from a female in the land
of the free.' This gentleman said: 'Oh to hell with that! I'm not the
kind of man to complain of her to the proprietor, but I simply quits. I
didn't pack no more than a razor, a comb, and a toothbrush, and my
belongings being so limited I naturally packs them around in my hip
pocket.'"

The proprietor, hearing all this, shook his head and remarked sadly:
"It's a wonder she didn't complain to me!"

The waitress, questioned, acknowledged to having held up a good many
ones--some who were still there indeed. These men, when asked, said she
had never spoken to them! For a moment it looked as if here was a clue.
Why did they lie? Or did they lie? Did the other man lie? If so, why?
What lay behind this? Only the sense of being superwhite with "females"
lay behind these denials.

The hunt for clues bogged down somewhere about there and, if the
murderer of the deputy marshal was being sought, we, at any rate, heard
no further word of that trouble.




CHAPTER XXV

PETE DISCOURSES


Pete and I, a month later, sat one night by the side of the waggon-road
from Foothills to Navajo, where it swings round into the North West. A
fire blazed before us, with a coffee-pot scenting the air; and to the
West were two waggons, loaded high with timber, and the waggon-horses
inquiring into their nose-bags.

The timber, which we were hauling from the Morgan Strong Lumber
Company's outfit at Foothills, was _en route_ to a site chosen by Mr.
Henry for a new corral of the Triangle. The last round-up had clinched,
in his mind, the intention to build a corral over by Sand Creek. As the
foreman explained it:

"'What you lose track of in the shuffle you discover in the deal,' is
another of these platitudes that stand for clever thinking. And most
proverbs, or aphorisms, if you follow them, considering they are whole
truth, will bring you to a boggy ford where you got to hitch a string of
aphorisms together to get a long enough rope to haul you out. Mr. Henry
reckons we lose a few head not only in the shuffle but in the deal and
he quits reciting a proverb to himself instead of building new corrals.
Now we builds the corrals. There are some who looks upon an aphorism as
gospel, whereas aphorisms, and proverbs generally, are half-lies. When
a man says 'What you lose in the shuffle you find in the deal' he ain't
stated all that is to it. Aphorisms is fragmentary--and no gent can live
long on quick lunches. Wherefore he changes what was good enough for
them he bought the ranch offen and, improving the stock, intends keeping
closer track on them. We falls to work in the slack season, and builds a
corral over to Sand Creek, where he always feels a corral should be, and
sheds for the new stock, and a sub-camp."

According to all cow-punching stories that ever I read, all that a
cow-puncher would permit himself to do, in connection with such building
operations, would be, on occasion, to rope a log and tow it, as the
spirit moved him, to the site of the corral. But that cowboy is dead. It
is true that Pete, when we pulled out from the lumber yards with our
team, remarked:

"If I was invited now to sign one of these here papers in which a man
has to tell his name, and age, and height in stockings, and profession
in life--such as sometimes a man has to sign in the land of the free--I
concloods it would be nearer truth to certify myself pile-driver instead
of roper."

The old tradition lingers but the new style "goes," which, in the slang,
does not mean "departs" but quite the opposite.

It was a good three days' trip, loaded; and two nights we had to
outspan, the first night at the limit of waggon-road, so far as it
served us, the second about half way between the waggon-road bend and
the new camp site on Sand Creek.

You do not haul a team thus with another man, and camp down beside him
at night, without getting to know him better. Pete and I had been
together a good deal by now, but to be partners among others is
different from being partners, and alone, under stars.

Of Apache we had heard no word since we returned to Henry and Stells
(with Yuma Bill, who hired on to the Triangle instead of going back to
his old outfit); and indeed no one had been either to Black Kettle or
Lone Tree for so much as mail of late.

But at Foothills we had come into the region of news. And some of the
news had been of Apache Kid. It looked as if he had fallen a prey to
that instinct, or whatever it be, that has been remarked by
criminologists as common to all classes of wanted people--to visit
again, sooner or later, the scene of the crime that put the law upon
their track. It may be something akin with that spirit which prompts
people to keep touching a tender place that has ceased to be actively
painful--an aching tooth for example. But this sort of thing can be
overdone.

The first we had heard of the re-appearance of Apache Kid was a rumour
that he had got boldly off a train at Lone Tree; but this seemed too
wild a rumour to be true. It had given Pete and me food for thought,
however; and now it gave us subject for discussion, when we made camp
and turned our toes to the companionable fire at night.

Pete, fatherly, had noticed me, before we began this hauling, and while
we were still at the home ranch, very eager to know when any one was
going to ride into town. I had suspected, from his expression, that he
was basing conjectures on this anxiety; and I surmised he was all wrong.
I had guessed that he thought he had struck a trail, remembering how, at
the hotel we put up at when we attended the sports, he had noticed that
I preferred a certain table, and had said:

"Is this here scouting for the same table due to the Injun spirit in you
of returning to the same old camp-fire stain, or is it--" and he had
ended in a grim closing of his mouth.

I had pled guilty, at the time, without voicing any guilt--in silence.
The waitress at that table had seemed more to my mind than the
hard-visaged lady (the proprietor's wife, I think) who attended at the
other end of the room. And, indeed, I had chatted once or twice with our
waitress; but she was not the cause of my anxiety for mail, as Pete had
thought. I doubt if she knew my name, and I knew only her Christian
name, by hearing her called to by the proprietor's wife.

Pete, fatherly toward me, had ruminated on my anxiety for mails. The
waitress at that restaurant was all he could think of as cause. But you
may as well know that I had, at last, in the leisure of our holiday,
written home to an uncle--father's brother--for news of the dad.
Relatives are sometimes kittle-cattle, and as I did not know how he
would take my letter I wearied for a reply.

It was on this, our second hauling from the Foothills, that Pete, by the
fire, sitting in the odour of coffee, promulgated "females," recharging
his pipe. He had been studying my face--which perhaps had shown
trouble--for I was thinking, at the moment, of my father, and wondering
if he was still under the cloud, or if "for they who are blinded we pray
for light," could be considered, by the parson, as having been answered.

"As regards females," said Pete, "I was once struck on a girl--she was a
wonderful sight, narrow shoulders, broad hips. When you was coming
behind her you did sure remark the swing of her quarters, which was as
easy as a doe, walked like a watching doe, she did, in kind of waves and
swings, which it might have been observing her made some observing gent
coin the saying: 'A-curving along the side-walk like a swallow.'"

"Oh!" said I, looking up and "cottoning." "What did she turn the scales
at? Was she a Jersey? I think you said something, and I was
inattentive."

But I did not put him off his trail. He seemed to like me all the better
for that. He was silent so long that I looked at him, and found his eye
was friendly on me.

"If your intellect is now returned to the mental reservation," he said.
"I may mention that I never see her in a bunch. She was always running
lonesome. Then one day I do see her with another female--with the boss's
wife where I was, same being related to me, so I was welcome to drop in.
And the boss's wife is speaking of a friend of hers who was a writer for
the papers--him coming into the talk because one of these here reporter
gents had been down on a free pass to write a whole lot about the place,
because the railway had town lots for sale, and was wanting to create a
stir. I see what he wrote after, and maybe anybody who had never seen
the place might get his stuff by heart and come in, and see what he was
told to see; but to me it looked as if I was reading about the Noo
Jerusalem. And the plain fact is that at a spiritualistic sance once a
gent who had lived there and died there was got in touch with, and all
he could be got to say about his condition was to ask for 'em to send on
his blankets. But I'm side-tracking myself. What I was saying was that
the boss's wife agrees with me that what you read ain't always what you
see; and to back her statements she says, not priding herself on him
none--but to the contrary--having no erroneous ideas of the bigness of
the job, however big the wages, she says: 'Well I know a little about
these things, for my father was a journalist in 'Frisco'--which was
quite true--'and he used often to tell us--' and in chips this here lady
I mentions as so elegant and attractive, and she says: 'Oh, yes--my
mother--eh--on the staff--Seattle P.I. (Postal Intelligencer),' but
whether it was that her mother had been on the staff, or was fired off
it, or had tried to get on, or had run after a man on the staff, didn't
amount to a row of red apples. I looks at the boss's wife, and she looks
at me, and then she gets on with her story; but I wasn't interested no
more in that doe-lady. You can tell a card-player the way he shuffles
the cards. What I say is, any man can have the whole indications of
whether a woman is white or not from just such little things. Them
little things is more vital than a whole lot; and the man who calls them
trivial is going to be fooled all the way. Here, you see, was failure to
understand what the boss's wife mentions her father for; and here was
failure to be able to hear that the boss's wife's father had been one of
these there noospaper gents, without ferreting out some relative, and
going one better. I mentions later a non-existent aunt of mine that had
married a college professor, and the doe-lady says: 'My uncle,' she
says,'eh--Harvard University.' Now a man that plays poker some didn't
need to do no more than look at her pretty face, and see how it tilts up
as she speaks, to know it was a bluff. She maybe had a knave in her
pack, but he was the only picture card."

I looked at Pete and smiled. I knew he was telling me all this not for
the sake of shooting off a chapter of his life-story at me, but for my
sake, he being a bachelor of the ranges who respected a good woman but
who feared for his friends lest a woman in their lives might mean
marriage, and marriage an end of their freedom.

"Look at me," I said. "Is there a queen in my pack?"

He seemed caught up at that. He had thought that he was subtly pumping
wisdom into me. Our eyes met.

"I have been asking a whole lot if the mail has come," said I, "ever
since we came home; but that was because I'm trying to get in touch with
my home folks, and hear about----"

"Your dad!" he cried. "Well, Bucket," he held out his hand, "shake!
Now--I often wondered you didn't do that; but every man's life is his
own. It was sure the only weak place in your story when you told us; but
I didn't like to say more then. And is your dad still in that sad place?
How is he?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm so eagerly and anxiously waiting news."

"You posts me when you hears," he said, "for I am interested in your
dad. It kind of made me feel soft, the way you tells of his shouting
that-aways about your brother's unexpected demise."

A little later:

"Don't you think," he said, "that I'm one of these here permiscuous
woman-haters. I merely has learnt to distrust folk that put on dog, and
such as ain't genuine, and gents and females impartial that toots their
own bazoo and must always raise you one better--which is generally one
worse; they whoops it up on you so that (all seeming friendly and
sociable--which is their long suit) you gives them, erroneous, the
bookays and the laurel wreaths--thereby robbing the Genuine, and joining
yourself to the herd of the easily bluffed. I suppose that man is liable
to make mistakes. Down in MacAlpine--since called Borax, because of the
discoveries of that substance there, and now 'most entirely a
shovel-wielding centre instead of a cow-man's town--I had my first signs
of the kind of person that there Diamond K foreman was, into whose
clutches I rings not only myself, but you. I meets up with him first in
MacAlpine City. With the advent of the prospector, boraxing, and copper
hunting, and silver-lead people defacing the bosoms of Nature, the
red-light houses in town manifests themselves beyond all reason. And the
mayor sends to various of us that made MacAlpine, since then Borax, a
letter--asking us to affix our names if we considers that the number of
these dives be more restricted. I gets this missive and feels someway
flattered--like as if it was one of these occurrences to write home back
east about to my blood folks that thought I could never take no place as
a responsible citizen and inform them casual, but whatever, about me
being asked to affix my name to this here progressive document, as a
token of my being of some account in the gregarious world, which is sure
the only world they recognises as constitootional. Not that I'm powerful
interested in the question one way or another. I shows this letter to
that foreman--George Washington Gay is his full name--and he frowns, and
says: 'Oh, pshaw--there ain't anything in this here. What's he want
round-robining the city for this-away?' which, falling in with my live
and let live ways, I kind of side-tracks, in my mind, the considering of
whether I signs or not. 'He ain't asked me to sign,' he says, kind of
speaking out mere meditations; but I was meditating too--meditating
side-trackin' this here round robin, as I says, and pays little
attention to his last remark. But that night I am kept awake with the
sounds of mirth, and general debauched singing over at the red-light
boxes; and in the morning, lacking sleep, I considers that 'live and let
live' cuts two ways--so I signs. _The MacAlpine City Tribune_, printed
entire by the mayor, comes out Tuesdays. This here was Sunday night that
the Diamond K man says there ain't anything in the protest; and on
Tuesday the reputable citizens is projectin' their names in cold print
on behalf of MacAlpine City being some more a credit to modern
civilisation, and shutting down these there red-light dives. And I see a
name flaunting there--Washington Gay--which I wonders is this any friend
to George Gay, who maybe sees different from his namesake, and also is
asked to be a reputable citizen and tote in to the corral among the
protestors ag'in the general kick-ups, and simultaneous playing of
diverse music in neigbouring red-light houses. But it transpires that
it is no other than plain George Gay--a-calling of himself by his middle
name, putting on dog for the sake of _The MacAlpine City Tribune_--being
as it were ashamed of his first name. And it leaks out that he has no
sooner wet-blanketed the round-robin protest proposition to me, than he
pikes over to call on the mayor, and sets up the jig-juice to him, pours
flattering words in his ears, and reckons that sooner or later the mayor
mentions his notion for signatures. So he does. And friend Gay applauds
so sincere that he is asked right there to affix his mark to the
round-robin. Thereafter the drink proposition lulls, and George Gay
appears as Washington Gay in the column of selected reputable persons
itchin' for the betterment of MacAlpine City--and I regrets seeing my
name in such company; but I crosses the paper where my name is, and
posts it to my relatives, knowing they will think a whole lot of it. I
notes also George Gay's play, but makes no comment. Now I was a blame
fool. Such indication was sufficient for any man, just as no man need go
projectin' around looking for the skunk once he has scented it. And any
man who says that a scent of a skunk ain't a vital matter, and only to
be ignored, is surely going to be fooled. But me not being a man given
to petty views, I continues amicable with Gay, and in course of time, me
being amicable--for though a little thing shows you a man's nature you
don't quarrel with him over it--he thinks he can play a game on me. This
here game I omit from my tale, for I go sick at the thought of it. The
more lenient and amicable you go with some cattle the more dog they put
on.

"I excuses Washington Gay for his duplicious ways in that first play,
and excuses his putting on dog. I see these here indications of the
range he roams on; and I goes on ignoring them. Then comes the split
between us, but he takes on so bad about it that I feels remorse for
leaving him out of my tab of friends that to meet is to treat, and
putting him among the mere 'how-dos.' Unable rightly to realise why he
is wiped off, he mourns a whole lot, goes around town calling me a good
fellow to everybody, till folks begin to think I'm some distant with one
who esteems me so high, and takes the liberty of bringing us
together--and there we are to be beheld, bellying up to the bar together
again in the old way--which I does as a concession to public opinion. My
son--never concess.

"I had sensed the smell of that skunk. I had surely seen his ear-marks,
and I was to be shown him more thorough--shown his brand--when actually
I knew all about him that time he pshaws away the moral document and
then goes and runs his mark on it. Now, us bein' friendly, he shuffles
the cards for a fresh game--begins calling me down, not too severe, but
allowing how he is disappointed some. On top of that he gets foreman of
the Diamond K, and (to show he is still as friendly as ever) invites me
up for roper to the outfit--which I accepts, and all the world beholds
how me, who has esteemed him a shorthorn, has coals of fire on my head.

"So there I am roping. And he has his revenge on me for cutting him off
my special intimates awhile back when he suggests that my roping ain't
what it was cracked up to be. He suggests this once, quiet--then again
stronger--and so I does not let him turn the last card. Nor does I
quarrel with him. It would seem plain enough to the most, but he is kind
of dense that-aways, so I merely steps over and asks for my wages as I
reckons to quit. 'Anything wrong?'" he says.

"'Not the slightest,' I says.

"'What on earth is the trouble?' he says.

"'No trouble whatever,' I says, and looks him fair and square--which him
comprehending the many qualities in himself, at that glance, apart from
any virtue in my bland gaze, the dog slides off him a whole lot for the
brief space it takes me to tie up my blankets and tobaccer. But I am no
sooner hitting out from the ranch than I see him swell up again, same as
a horned toad. Looking at me for that spell he had been plain George
Gay, scarce tolerable at that now, but not too pre-sumptious. When I
departs he is once again Washington Gay, throwing the big bluff to men
that know him better, till they comes to reckon, same as me, to accept
the smell for the sight of a skunk--to take the evidence of ear-marks
and not go cuttin' into the herd, and looking at a brand for full and
unnecessary confirmation.

"Which the moral is, same as in the female story I narrates--follow the
promptings of your divine instincts. Yuma tells me that when he met up
with Apache in Cheyenne, Apache has a remark about that foreman that he
bears him a grudge for blabbing to the 'tecs, just after the hold-up,
about you being maybe able to give some information, and that if it had
come to anything he would have burnt the trail up to the Diamond K and
sent George Washington Gay on the jump to the Golden Gates with a
surprised look."

I had a sudden start then, and Pete and I--looking at each other across
the fire, shared a thought.

"Oh he wouldn't do nothing so foolish now," said Pete, "I guess what we
hears of him being in the country is only scares--the way some folk talk
of Injun trouble still, when Injuns is all mostly growing tomatoes, and
growing alfalfa, and working on irrigating projects."

"I hope so," I said; "but from what I've seen of Apache he's a brooder,
and--"

"Him! Why he's plumb full of sufficient for the day is the sport
thereof--he don't brood any."

"Not on the future," I said; "that's the trouble. On the past, at times,
he does brood, I'm certain; and then he wants to wipe out scores."

"Oh that Diamond K man ain't no account," said Pete. "The Apache Kid
wouldn't trouble about him serious."




CHAPTER XXVI

THE OUTLAW BULL


The new corral was built; and at Sand Creek we had a new sub-camp, with
Pete for boss. One day I was alone, and he and Yuma, with another man,
were riding the creek-side "looking" the cattle for a bunch of beeves
(for an order of Jules of Chicago, to be precise in this event), when I
was aware, in the midst of my biscuit making, of a pounding of the
ground far off, as when a herd has settled to a good gait and is moving
the landscape behind it.

Out I ran and saw the dust rising North West. The herd was on the run,
and at the speed it travelled there would be difficulty in pulling it up
for lining into the corral. You know what that may mean. I have worked a
day (on one occasion), with a dozen other men, endeavouring to run a
herd into a corral, and no--that corral had no interest for them.

To run a herd easily into a corral you must get them bunched some way
off, and string them, one at a time, in the way they head for
water-holes, Indian file; and then the corral does seem a desirable
haven for them; they have then "no kick" against going in.

Next moment I saw that the three men were putting up a big endeavour to
check that stampede. I saw the flash, flash of revolvers going off, as
they brought in the sound of their guns--fired in air--to help in the
heading off. On to my horse I went, and curved away across to meet
them, riding not too directly in face of the herd till I should see just
how they shaped; but first I let out not only the ordinary entrance to
the corral, but a whole division of bars as well. It was a wild, and
great, hour that, while the four of us headed and circled that herd.

Then Pete, grimed and black with dust, breathing short, explained to me
the excitement. An outlaw bull, that had dodged four round-ups, was in
the herd, "and it do seem a chance to bring him in at last. He is plumb
in the centre. It would sure be a good omen for this here new camp to
rope him in and get it to penetrate his bull mind that he belongs to the
Triangle for sure, and ain't just a gallivanterer."

And we got him into the corral. We ran the whole bunch in, and that
black bull--who, if he had only known it, was in peril of his life, the
boss really having outlawed him, and said that if he acted wild much
more he would have to be shot instead of creating further disturbance,
and cutting into herds where he had no right. There he bellowed now, and
kinged it in the herd, guileless of ear-marks, and bearing no brand.

In we went to the large corral and began cutting out carefully, one by
one, the rest of the herd. It was dark before we were through, and next
day we were all awake early, eager and excited to complete the work.

"Which we signs on for torreador and bullfights in Mexico after we
closes up this game," said Yuma when, after a forenoon's work, with
casualties on our side of one pony gored, and Merry Mike--the other man
with us--grazed down his leg in an ugly fashion, the bull was alone,
rampaging round the corral.

Merry Mike was the one who rode over to the home ranch to tell the great
tidings, and incidentally procure some liniment; and there we waited,
feeling that a good omen had visited the new corral.

Next day Henry in person, with the foreman, rode over to admire his
black majesty tossing his horns there and challenging the world. Henry,
a curiously quiet and determined man, sat his horse, eyeing the outlaw
bull, and then remarked gently:

"He goes in that bunch for Jules of Chicago--and God help the railway
men."

Then we fell to to get a rope on the outlaw. He snapped two as if they
had been pack-thread, getting away back with a bit of play on them, then
running forward and slacking them, and next--before we could tighten
up--dashing back, and snap! the rope was broken. The third rope we hung
to, and held him up; but, infuriated, he charged us as if he would fain
gore us between the bars. We took advantage of the charge to gather in
the slack, wildly, and the foreman adroitly hitched the end to a
bar--when, suddenly, back went the black king, and snap went rope three!

But after an hour or so we had him up close to the bars, where he had
no play, well roped, and close roped, hauled up tight to the bars and
looking through at us. Then we went to eat flap-jacks and drink tea and
consider what a great fighter was that outlaw bull.

"He's like Apache Kid," said Henry.

"Have you heard any more news of him, sir?" asked Pete.

"You heard the latest I suppose? He has been all along from this ranch
to that. No doubt he has been fed at outfits that say nothing; but some
have talked. They say he is locoed. It looks as if he had an idea of
surely running amuk. He appears to-day at one outfit, riding up, asks a
horse. He gets it. Asks a meal. He gets it. For he asks it sweetly and
graciously--but with his rifle on his arm. The latest, so far as I know,
is that he rode up to a sub-camp of the Y.Z. on Kettle River, and
somebody there, not feeling either friendly or to be intimidated, put up
a bluff on him, and gave him the glad hand, fed him, told him he could
have as many horses as he wanted; and then Apache camped down in his
wickeup to sleep. Out went this fellow and pranced over to the home
ranch, got up three of the boys--this Kettle River outfit having no
sneaking regard for Apache--and back they came, making out to corral
him, and carry him to that thousand dollar bid, still open I suppose.
But there's a little bit of scrub half way between the home ranch of the
Y.Z. and this sub-camp, and as they came ploughing through there,
Apache, who had either played possum for sheer devilment, or wakened up
and tumbled--after this fellow piked out--and reckoned it was his long
suit, though maybe they didn't think so--well, Apache had ridden along
and cached himself there in the scrub. Seeing the three coming sifting
back he considered he held cards to make good--and whaled away on them.
Down went two, and the other wheeled for home, with Apache after him
till they struck the stage road. Then Apache quit."

There was a silence.

"That's the latest news?" I asked.

"That's the latest we have."

Pete looked up and sighed deeply.

"Not but what," he said, "there's a kind of respect due to outlaw
bulls;" and he rose and went out to stand ruefully, and meditatively,
regarding the black outlaw hauled up tight, with his horns protruding,
at the corral bars.




CHAPTER XXVII

AT THE PUEBLO WALL


Yuma Bill rode off right away to order that the team of Montana drays be
put in the heavy waggon, and driven over to the sub-camp; and the rest
of us, ignoring, for the time being, the black king, fell to work in the
other corral driving out the not wanted, and holding back the bunch for
Jules's order.

After moon-up, when we were through with that work, and the freed steers
had moved away into space and disappeared, the steady plug-plug of the
Montanas sounded, and the waggon came groaning in. Next morning that
waggon came into play. It was backed up to the corral where the outlaw
bull stood gazing between the bars, backed close up and then, after
hitching new ropes around the bull, and tying them close to the tail of
the waggon, we simply loosened the ropes that so far had held him, and
withdrew the bar to which they had been tied.

The corral was thus now open before him--but he was tied up close to the
waggon.

The teamster mounted. The men who were to drive the herd ki-yied it out,
and spraddled it _en route_, and away they went, herd and beeves, in
clouds of dust. Then the teamster shook his reins, and the Montanas
pulled out.

The bull bellowed defiance, and stiffened his legs; but he had to go. To
the Montanas, bred and raised for hauling, he was no weight at all. The
waggon seemed little heavier to them than it had been on the previous
night, when they came over with it light.

But that black outlaw was game. He stiffened his legs and was simply
pulled out. Nary walk! He took not on step. He sagged back on the short
ropes and was turned into a kind of animate plough. Henry rode behind.
The foreman and Yuma and the rest had gone on with the herd, Yuma to go
only as far as the home-ranch for some new ropes. Henry rode behind, and
Pete and I were there too; for Henry, seeing how the bull was behaving,
told us to accompany the waggon in case of being required, as the outlaw
might get full mad, and be obstreperous, even there, cinched up as he
was.

So we rode at the waggon tail, and none of us liked it. The sense of
victory began to fall dull as we noted the bull's trail--a deep furrow
between the furrows of the waggon-wheels. We rode behind, quiet,
brooding.

Then Pete said.

"What you remarks last night, Mr. Henry, about Apache Kid and this here
outlaw bull, preys some on my mind; and if it's all the same to you, me
being mushy and soft that-aways, I esteems it a favour if you allow that
maybe I ain't needed here, and I ambles on and rides with the herd."

"Sure," said Henry. "I understand your sentiments; but this bull has
annoyed me considerably; and I feel that I am getting even with him."

"Which I surely comprehends," said Pete. "A man can comprehend what he
wouldn't do himself--him not being whetted up by no personal taunts and
reproaches, such as that bull throws at you personal these last four
years," and he rode on.

But that bull kept on in his great fight.

We came to the home ranch, where the herd had been held while the boys
who were going on with it--to Lone Tree, not Black Kettle, a longer
drive--had snatched a meal. We could see the dust of the herd ahead
again. But there we halted, and when we halted the bull simply sagged
down, as near prone as the ropes would allow. We thought it was the
sudden stopping of the team that put him down so, he being braced
against it all the way. But when he fell he merely lay panting, with
rolling eyes, and distended neck.

"You go and eat," said Henry abruptly and, for the first time in my
calling, I found that my work had taken the wire edge off my appetite. I
ate but little, for the hoofs of that bull were worn like nails by his
determined drag--worn nearly to the flesh by the friction of the trail;
and I kept seeing him as I ate; and I was thinking of Apache Kid, and
understanding Pete's request to be let off standing-by at that waggon
tail.

When I tumbled out again I took the reins of my pony, and walked to the
waggon to see what my orders might be--whether to accompany the waggon
further on, or what. Henry stood looking at the bull, it still prone.

"I reckon," he said, "that he is tender on the feet now, and if we
loosen him, and let him get up, he will be amenable to reason and walk
rationally into Lone Tree."

The teamster approached, and he and I loosened the ropes and let the
bull free. Still he lay there. Henry took his quirt and, bending from
the saddle, flailed his flanks--and the bull rose. There he stood, and
Henry by him, considering. The teamster hauled the waggon aside, and I
flicked the bull to urge him on; but there he stood.

And then we heard the teamster cry out an exclamation in the vernacular,
and there came a whirl of dust, and a rush of a horseman, and a horse
was pulled up beside us, pulled up sharp, and fell in the dust, dead,
after two great sobbing gusts of breath that make the nostrils distend
pathetically. The rider was on his feet, with wild eyes, his face
covered with grit, and a gun in his hand.

"Give me a horse!" he cried, seeming to recognise no one. "Lively! A
horse! A horse--or I scatter your brains."

"All right! All right, Apache!" cried Henry.

"All right, Apache!" I cried.

"A horse!" shouted Apache. "Lively! Or I eliminate this whole outfit. I
have no use for humanity. Lacking what I want I simply wipe out
the----"

"All right! Get a horse, you! Get a horse! We're your friends here,
Apache Kid."

"Oh! All right! But I've heard that before."

"Say--couldn't you _cache_ here? Are they after you?" said Henry.

"_Cache_ here? What's this?" he looked round. "Oh sure--"

"The Triangle! Pueblo Wall! Henry and Stell owners--I'm Henry. Here you
are! Here's a horse right now! But what's the matter with _caching_ here?"

"They're too close."

"We'll say you rode through hell-bent--couldn't do anything before you
were through."

Apache breathed like a hard-ridden bronco.

"Give me a gun," he said. "I have rifled this blamed thing."

"A gun! A gun! Get a gun! See--my cartridge belt--hanging on the--yes."

"Better do as Mr. Henry suggests, Apache," I said, "and cache here.
We'll swear you rode through hell-for-leather."

He pointed at his horse lying dead on the track. The man who had rushed
in for Mr. Henry's belt and gun dashed back, and held them out to
Apache, who snatched them from him.

"By heck!" he said, "I'm about all in. And here they come!"

They did too. A great whirl of dust swept down on the ranch buildings.
The pursuers were hot on Apache's track.

He gave a great inward suck of breath through his nostrils, and his chin
went out, and his head up; he braced himself and seemed to grow
inches--then dashed up from the waggon-track and stood with his back to
the old Pueblo wall.

Down came the riders and wheeled, and the guns snapped. We saw Apache
sag down on his knees. It looked as if he were praying, but, as we found
later, both legs were shot.

"Not like that!" he screamed, and with a quick motion he flung himself
with his legs to right, supporting himself on his left hand, and then up
with the right, and his gun spoke, and one of the riders went down.
Again his revolver spoke, and another fell.

It was too much for the Triangle boys. From the bunk house came a flash
and a snap, a rifle snap. The Triangle had joined in with Apache. I had
blood in my eyes. I pulled my gun, which I had worn all the while at the
sub-camp, and flailed into the bunch of riders. Henry, who had
dismounted, flopped on his belly to dodge the riders.

There was a fusilade of shots--from the Triangle bunk house; they
rattled a tattoo.

Henry shouted:

"Give me that gun--I'm your boss--I order you."

"To hell with you!" I cried.

He darted away.

The dust of the riders slackened, and they threw off their horses and
drew back, to fire standing behind their mounts.

"All in! All in! Quit firing boys!" I heard a yell, and ceased whaling
into the crowd of horsemen, and looked around to the Pueblo wall--to see
Apache, legs still out to right, with head hanging down, and body folded
forward, his gun hand stretched.

The shots ceased. The dust fell. We looked from one to another. A man
went over from the posse of Apache's pursuers and looked down on him.
That was the signal for full cessation of hostilities.

Mr. Henry appeared again, our boys at his heels. The posse men came
after their leader, who still stood by Apache.

"He's dead," said the leader.

Yuma Bill stepped forward.

"Then take off your hat," he said.

There was a falling back of all from the Apache Kid, who lay there with
his chin in the sand. There was a great silence. And in it that black
bull held up his head and:

"Moo-o-o-o-o!" he moaned.

Henry looked round. There stood the outlaw, with an inch, or less, of
hoof, his head up, his neck distended. His head went down and he shook
dust with his horns; he pawed a hoof, but the bellow was of pain.

"God damn that outlaw bull!" said Mr. Henry with a breaking voice, and
he stepped over to it. "We release you," he said, and marching up close
blew out its brains and stood aside.

"You can go home now--you fellows," he said, "you who came around here
raising hell on this ranch as if you were a Dalton gang curving down on
us, as if you were going to hold up the outfit, so that you put us all
on the shoot. You take off your dead men. I have none of them here. And
you leave the Apache Kid. He lies at the Triangle--pending inquiries."

And the posse did as it was bid by Mr. Henry--and retired, subdued; and
we carried in Apache and laid him on Henry's cot.

That was the end of Apache Kid as well as I can tell it; and all I need
say of him, lest I say too much, is that many a worse man has died in
bed, with the wafer in his hand or a sky-scout exhorting.




CHAPTER XXVIII

EPILOGUE


My sorrow for the death of the Apache Kid, during the next few days, was
a little balanced by a personal joy. For, so far from my uncle having
ignored my letter to him, I received a reply--from my father. He was no
longer bug-house, but as sound in his thought chambers as ever. My uncle
had handed over my missive to him; and, so full of joy was my father at
hearing of me again, that he ended the letter he wrote by return, by
saying that he had already booked his passage through to Black Kettle,
and would be at New York by the time I was reading.

He was surely as sane as any man I ever met; and his first words to me,
when he stepped from the car at Black Kettle, and I pranced up and held
his hand, were:

"Is this Will? Ah! Will--Will! I see you are a man!"

If this seems an egotistical note to end upon, I would remind any
possible objectors (one in a hundred, I hope), of the cry my father gave
when he went loco; and we don't live so much for our own approval as for
the approval of some one to whom we are attached.




THE END


THE BALLANTYNE PRESS TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN LONDON




OTHER BOOKS BY FREDERICK NIVEN


DEAD MEN'S BELLS

MORNING POST: "A romance as living and moving as any we have read for
many a long day."

DAILY GRAPHIC: "Introduces a character whom R. L. S. would not have been
ashamed of inventing."

PALL MALL GAZETTE: "You feel the wind on your cheeks as you read, and
smell the sea and the heather."

EYE-WITNESS: "He has written a book in which we savour the immortals."


ABOVE YOUR HEADS

PALL MALL GAZETTE: "A book of note . . . whose exceptional traits will
claim decided recognition."

STANDARD: "This volume . . . reaffirms what is already sufficiently
known--that Mr. Niven is one of the most promising of our younger
writers."


A WILDERNESS OF MONKEYS

OBSERVER: "It has in it the rarest qualities, a crusading spirit, a
quixotic idealism. . . . If it should seem that the book is overweighted
with the sense of sex, we can only say that any such fault is more than
balanced by its cleverness, humour and love of beauty."

TELEGRAPH: "An exceedingly interesting and indeed remarkable book."

       *       *       *       *       *

MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI

SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF

CARNIVAL

By COMPTON MACKENZIE




PUNCH:

"After reading a couple of pages I settled myself in my chair for a
happy evening, and thenceforward the fascination of the book held me
like a kind of enchantment. I despair, though, of being able to convey
any idea of it in a few lines of criticism. . . . As for the style, I
will only add that it gave me the same blissful feeling of security that
one has in listening to a great musician. . . . In the meantime, having
recorded my delight in it, I shall put 'Carnival' upon the small and by
no means crowded shelf that I reserve for 'keeps.'"


PALL MALL GAZETTE:

"The study of Jenny, a most fascinating heroine, reveals rare and
penetrating insight into that baffling mystery, the heart of a girl, and
in fine, 'Carnival' is among the striking literary triumphs of the
season."


ATHENUM: [_From a column notice_.

"Mr. Mackenzie's second novel amply fulfils the promise of his
first. . . . Its first and great quality is originality. The originality
of Mr. Mackenzie lies in his possession of an imagination and a vision
of life that are as peculiarly his own as a voice or a laugh, and that
reflect themselves in a style which is that of no other writer. . . .
A prose full of beauty."


MORNING POST:

"It certainly marks a big stride upwards in Mr. Mackenzie's career as a
novelist. It is a genuine achievement."


OUTLOOK:

"In these days of muddled literary evaluations, it is a small thing to
say of a novel that it is a great novel; but this we should say without
hesitation of 'Carnival,' that not only is it marked out to be the
leading success of its own season, but to be read afterwards as none but
the best books are read."

       *       *       *       *       *

MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI

SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF The Passionate Elopement

By COMPTON MACKENZIE


WESTMINSTER GAZETTE:

"Mr. Mackenzie's book is a novel of genre, and with infinite care and
obvious love of detail has he set himself to paint a literary picture in
the manner of Hogarth. He is no imitator, he owes no thanks to any
predecessor in the fashioning of his book. . . . Mr. Mackenzie recreates
(the atmosphere) so admirably that it is no exaggeration to say that,
thanks to his brilliant scene-painting, we shall gain an even more vivid
appreciation of the work of his great forerunners. Lightly and vividly
does Mr. Mackenzie sketch in his characters . . . but they do not on
that account lack personality. Each of them is definitely and faithfully
drawn, with sensibility, sympathy, and humour."


PALL MALL GAZETTE:

"'The Passionate Elopement' is an attempt, and a most successful one, to
reproduce the life at an inland spa in the days of hoops, sedan-chairs,
powder, patches, and quadrille. The reproduction is perfect; at the very
first paragraph we feel transported a century and a half back into the
past. . . . It is seldom indeed that we read a first novel that is so
excellent. . . . Those who like good writing and a faithful picture of
the England of Sheridan's day will find 'The Passionate Elopement' much
to their taste."


MORNING POST:

"The reader of 'The Passionate Elopement' will have no hesitation in
hailing its author, Mr. Compton Mackenzie, as a very promising recruit
to the ranks of young novelists. It is a work of very real literary
ability, and for a first novel unusual constructive powers. . . . Mr.
Mackenzie is delicate in dialogue, imaginative in description."


TIMES:

"We are grateful to him for wringing our hearts with the 'tears and
laughter of spent joys.'"


ENGLISH REVIEW:

"All his characters are real and warm with life. 'The Passionate
Elopement' should be read slowly, and followed from the smiles and
extravagance of the opening chapters through many sounding and poetical
passages, to the thrilling end of the Love Chase. The quiet irony of the
close leaves one smiling, but with the wiser smile of Horace Ripple who
meditates on the colours of life."


SPECTATOR:

"As an essay in literary bravura the book is quite remarkable."


SUNDAY TIMES:

"Mr. Mackenzie has wrought an admirable piece of work, which has the
daintiness of a piece of Dresden china and the polish of a poem by Mr.
Austin Dobson."


GLASGOW NEWS:

"Fresh and faded, mocking yet passionate, compact of tinsel and gold is
this little tragedy of a winter season in view of the pump room. . . .
Through it all, the old tale has a dainty, fluttering, unusual, and very
real beauty."

       *       *       *       *       *

MARTIN SECKER, NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET, ADELPHI


       *       *       *       *       *

  Transcriber's notes:

  Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

  The following printers errors were addressed.

  Page 25 'arcoss' changed to 'across' (across the Atlantic)

  Page 113 'deside' changed to 'beside' (into the dip beside them)

  Page 158 'wasnt't' changed to 'wasn't' (Wasn't sure of the step)

  Page 167 'buttoms' changed to 'bottoms' (long grass of the bottoms)

  Page 269 'enthusiam' changed to 'enthusiasm' (work up no enthusiasm
  over the)

  Page 290 'surreptiously' changed to 'surreptitiously' (surreptitiously
  pointed out to me)

  Page 297 'intead' changed to 'instead' (centre instead of a cow-mans
  town)

  Page 309 'on' changed to 'one' (He too not one step)




[End of _Hands Up!_ by Frederick Niven]
