Chapter IV: Part 4

You will hear persons speak of one who has been in a trance or swoon as "returning to consciousness." I remember once of hearing someone objecting to the phrase, saying that a person was either conscious or unconscious, and to speak of one returning to consciousness as though there was a middle state, he argued, was erroneous; but I discovered for myself, that day, the full meaning of the phrase; for first it was a sound that I heard, a sound as of rustling wings, and this presently changed and became the sound of whispering as of a whole chamber full of furtive, stealthy persons talking under the breath. Then I was aware of the sunlight in my face and at the same moment the number of voices dwindled and the power of them increased. I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a mighty uncomfortable and strained position upon a slab of rock, so hot with the sun that my hands, which were behind my back and under me as I lay, were absolutely scorched. I made to withdraw them and then found they were fast tied together.

As for the voices I heard, they were only two in number, I think.

"He's all right; I see his eyes flickerin'," said one, and there, bending over me, was a face as full of evil as ever I desired to see.

I have seen a cast of an eye that almost seemed to give a certain quaint charm to a face; but the cast in these eyes that scrutinised me now was of the most diabolic.

My head was beating and thumping like a shipyard with all its riveters, and the pain between my eyes was well-nigh unbearable.

With puckering eyebrows I scrutinised my captor, and as I did so he cried out: "Here you are now, Farrell."

"Right!" came a voice from behind, and the man called Farrell shuffled down on us, a big-boned, heavy-browed man with a three days' stubble on his face which was of a blue colour around the upper lip and on the jaws--and over his right cheek-bone there was an ugly scar of a dirty white showing there amidst the sun-tan.

I thought at first it was a whip he carried in his hand, but suddenly what I took for the thong of the whip wriggled as of its own accord, and addressing himself to it, he said: "None o' your wrigglin', Mr. Rattler, or I 'll give you one flick that 'll crack your backbone."

Then I saw that what he carried was a stick, with a short string at the end of it and in the end of that string was a noose, taut around a rattlesnake's tail, just above the knob of the rattle.

"See what I've bin fishin' for you?" he said, and laughed in an ugly way.

He of the terrible eyes caught me roughly by the shoulders and drew me to a sitting posture, so that I saw where we were--on a rock-strewn ledge of some cliffs, which I supposed to be those we had seen on our left from the valley. But owing to the rise of the ledge toward the front I could not see the lower land, only the far, opposing cliffs, blue and white and yellow, with the fringe of trees a-top. And lying on their bellies at the verge of the shelf on which we were, I then saw two other men, with their rifles beside them, lying like scouts, gazing down intently on the valley.

I had no thought then as to how we came there, where my friends were, nor for any other matter save my own present peril. For before I was well aware, and while yet too feeble to offer any resistance, too dazed to make any protest, I was flung down upon my face in the sand, and then, "Give me a hand here, you two," said Farrell, and the scouts turned and rose, and, one of them clutching me by the back of the neck and thrusting my face down into the sand, I felt a weight gradually crushing upon my back and legs.

"That's him!" said one, and then my neck was freed.

The weight upon my buttocks and legs was nothing else than a great, flat slab of rock. I thought, though it had been lowered gently enough on me, that the heaviness of it would alone be sufficient to crush my bones. Certainly to move below the waist was quite out of the question.

All this I suffered in a dumb, half-here, half-away fashion, my head hammering and my tongue parched in my mouth like a piece of dry wood. But when these four laughed brutally among themselves and began a series of remarks such as: "See and don't give it an inch too short," or, "See that the string's taut or we 'll not get what we want," I came more to my senses and wondered what was to befall me. Then, for the first time, I was addressed directly by Farrell.

"Well, kid," he said, "you 're in a tight corner--you hear me?

"I hear you," said I, speaking with difficulty, so dry was my throat.

"Well," said he, "you can get out of this fix right off by telling us where the Lost Cabin Mine lies. And that's business right off, with no delay."

"I can never do that," said I, "for I don't know myself."

There was a chorus of unbelieving grunts and then: "All right," snapped the voice. "Fact is, we have n't much inclination to loiter here. You 've taken a mighty while to come round, too, as it is--shove it in," he broke off.

But the last words were not for me.

One of the others stepped before me, his foot grazing my head, and I heard him say, "There?"

"No," said another. "That's over close--yes, there. That's the spot."

And then they all stepped back from me, and I, lying with my chin in the dust, saw what the man had been about; for directly before me was the point of the stick, thrust into the ground, with the snake noosed by the tail to it.

No sooner had the man who fixed it in leaped back (and he did so very smartly, while the others laughed at him and caused him to rip out a hideous oath) than the reptile coiled fiercely up the stick; but the hand was gone from the end of it, and down it slithered again.

Then it saw me with its beady eyes, rattled fiercely, again coiled, and--I closed my eyes and drew in my head to the shoulders and wriggled as far to the side as I could.

But something smote me on the chin. I felt my heart in my throat, and thought I to myself, "I am a dead man now"; but before I opened my eyes again I heard another rattle, opened my eyes in quick horror, saw the second leap of the snake toward me, and shrivelled backward again.

"Close shave!" cried one of my tormentors; but this time, after the tap on my chin I felt something moist trickle down upon the point of it, and I thought me that I was close enough to get the poison that it spat, but not close enough to allow of its fangs reaching me.

"But if this stuff should reach my eye it might be fatal," thought I, heedless now of headache or weariness, or anything but the terrible present. My mouth, too, I kept tight closed, as you may guess.

"Will you tell us now, kid?" cried Farrell. "Will you spit it out now?"

Thought I to myself: "I must die now for certain. I trust that even if I knew, I would not reveal this that they ask. But assuredly, to reveal it or to keep it secret is not mine to choose. I must even die."

It came into my head that soon the thin string would, at one of these leaps, cut clean through the snake's tail, and then-- Then it leapt again.

"I do not know!" cried I. "I cannot tell you!"

"Then you can just lie there!" snapped one of the four, and went back to his place of outlook on the ledge. And the other, who had been watching the valley, came and stood by my shoulder, irritating the snake, by his presence, to fresh efforts.

"You 're a fool," he said. "Your partners have deserted you. They 're off. There ain't hide nor hair to be seen of them. If they 'd leave you in a lurch like this, you 're a fool not to let us know the location. We 'll follow 'em up again and take vengeance on 'em for you--see?"

And just then, as though to refute his remarks as to the heedlessness of my partners, I heard a faint snap of a rifle, and the man with the squint, who had taken his turn on guard at the place this fellow had vacated, turned round and said he: "Boys, O boys, I 'm hit!"

Something in the tone of his voice made me glance at him sharply, but with half an eye for the snake, as you may be sure, and my ears alert for its warning rattle. I was never more alert in my life than then, and, strange though it may seem, the predominating thought in my mind was, "How sad, how very sad to leave this world, never to see the rich, rich blue of that sky again!"

But, as I say, the tone of the man's voice breaking in on my thoughts and terrors was peculiar, and, with my head still as low in my shoulders as I could manage to hold it, I laid my cheek to the hot sand and looked at him. He had turned to the man who had been standing by me, but at sound of the shot had dropped to his knees.

"Does it look bad?" said he, drawing his finger across his forehead, where was a tiny mark, and then holding out his hand and looking on it for traces of blood, raising up his face for inspection by the man beside me at the same time, and a question in his eyes, very much as you have seen a child, "Is my face clean, mother?" Yes, and with a very childish voice, too.

"It don't look bad," was the reply--and neither it did.

But when he turned away again to the other sentry who lay further off, repeating his question to him in that simple voice, I saw the back of his head. And his brains were dribbling out behind upon his neck. A terrible weakness filled my heart. I heard him say, with no oath, as one might have expected, but in a soft voice: "Dear me!" and again, "Dear me! How very dark it is getting!"

Which was an awful word to hear with the sun blazing right in his eyes out of the burnished, palpitating sky. And then he put it as a question and still with the note of astonishment: "Dear me, isn't that strange? Is n't it getting very----" and he sank forward on his face; but what followed I do not know. In the terror of my own position I kept all my faculties alert; but at the sight of that man's back and the bloody wound, and at the childish voice of him, the world seemed to wheel. A sickness came on me and I fainted away.

*CHAPTER XII*

_*I Am Held as a Hostage*_

It must have been more of a momentary squeamishness, that, rather than a fainting fit, I think; for I heard myself moan twice, was conscious of the moaning. There seemed something pressing on my heart and forcing me to gasp for breath and relieve the tension on it. A sweat broke on me then, and after that I felt myself, as it were, swinging through space, and with another gasp and a great gulp of air the world spun back again and there I lay, the cold sweat standing on my brow, and the rattlesnake coiling afresh.

"Why! What's this move now?" I heard one of my captors cry. "What's he doin' with his rifle carried and waggling his hand in the air that ways?"

"Don't you know what that is? That's the peace sign--flat of the hand held up, palm open and pushed forward wi' that there kind o' to-and-fro movement."

"Peace sign be durned! If I was sure we could get the information out of this here kid laying behind us, I'd put a bullet through his skull and let out his brains--front of his face or back of his neck like Cockeye there--all the same to me."

"Reckon you 'd be safer not to do that."

"Think the kid here won't speak, then?"

"No; I don't think he'll speak. I've just been figurin' that neither Apache Kid nor Larry might tell him. He's liable to be givin' you straight goods and no lie when he says he don't know the location."

"Pity we did n't drop Apache Kid's hoss that time they charged down. We could ha' got him, instead, that way. Reckon we need n't have been so scared o' killin' Apache Kid himself without gettin' the news. But say! This won't do. I don't like the looks of this thing. They all are getting a move on 'em and edgin' up this way, the whole three of 'em."

"Three of them," thought I, with my eye on the rattler. "That's one short. I wonder who has been killed or disabled."

"Say! Shout to him to stop. Tell him if he wants to pow-wow with us to come up alone."

"Yes, and leave his rifle down. You do the talkin' now, Farrell."

"Right," said Farrell, and then he shouted, "Well, what do you want?"

"I want to come up and talk this out with you," hailed a voice that I recognised for Apache Kid's.

"He can't come up here," said Farrell. "We don't want 'em to know that we 're only a threesome now, same as 'em."

"I 'll tell you what to do," said one of them, with the voice of a man who has been visited by a sudden inspiration.

"Stop there a minute!" cried Farrell, and then turning to the speaker he said sharply: "Spit it out then, Pete; what's your notion?"

"Loosen the kid there," said Pete, "and set him on the front here and hold your gat to his head while we hear what they 've got to palaver."

"Hum!" mused Farrell. "Kind o' hostage notion? Heh? Well, there's something in that," and he stood upright fearlessly and held his hand aloft, the palm facing away to those in the valley.

"You can come up the length o' that there white rock," he cried, and then to his companions: "See! Lend a hand here."

The snake had coiled again. I cannot guess how often it had sprung at me; I do not know. All that I know is that at every fresh rattle I crouched my head into my shoulders and gasped to myself the one word "God"; for we all, I believe, no matter what manner of lives we have led, at the last moment give a cry to the Unknown, in our hearts, if not with our lips. And every leap of the snake I was prepared to find the one that was to make an end of my acquaintance with the sunlight and with the sweet airs that blow about the world.

But that torment was over now, for with one swift drop of his rifle-butt Farrell cut the head clean from the hideous long body, and then lent the other two men a hand to roll the great stone from off my aching limbs.

"Stand up, you son of a whelp," he said, and spurned me with his boot.

After the terror of the snake there seemed little now that I need heed.

"It's easier said than done!" I cried, angry at his words. "I 'm like a block of stone from my waist down."

"I guess that's right. He must be feeling that way," said one of the others, with a touch of commiseration in his voice.

That was the first sign of any heart that I had discovered in the ruffians.

"Oh, you guess it's right, do you, Dan?" sneered Farrell. "Well, lend a hand and haul him here to the front of this ledge."

Next moment it was as if a thousand red-hot needles were being run into my stiff, trailing legs, for they caught me up by my arms and drew me like a sack to the front of the cliff.

And then I saw the whole plateau below us. Apache Kid was half-way up the rise, among the long wire-grass at the verge of the cliffs; further down, leaning upon a rock, his shoulders and head visible, was Larry Donoghue. The third man that had been spoken of I could not see and searched the hillside in vain for; but when Farrell stood upright beside me and waved his hand I saw the half-breed, Charlie, who had come after us with Mr. Pinkerton, rise behind a flat rock and lounge across it, looking up on us with his broad sombrero pushed back on his head.

Mr. Pinkerton, I supposed, had been prevailed upon to return out of our dispute, lest his life might be the forfeit for his interest in our behalf. But just as that explanation for his non-appearance had satisfied me I saw, half across the plain, something moving slowly--a pack of horses it seemed, and so clear was the air of that late afternoon that I recognised the form of the mounted man who guarded them, could almost, with a lengthy and concentrated survey, descry his great beard like a bib upon his breast.

"Well," said Farrell, "what do you want to pow-wow about? You see who we got here?"

"I see," said Apache Kid, putting a foot upon the white stone. "How are you, Francis?"

"He 's all right," said Farrell. "But he 's a kind o' prisoner o' war just now."

"Oh!" said Apache Kid. "Well, I suppose if we want to get him back we 'll have to buy him back?"

"That's what!" said Farrell, emphatically.

"Well," said Apache Kid, "we are going on,--my friends and I,--and, as we have your horses now as well as our own, we thought we might perhaps be able to trade you them back for the lad."

And here, as you will be wondering how the horses had changed hands, I must tell you what I had afterwards explained to me.

It seems that no sooner did I fall from my horse, at the time it put its foot in the badger hole (Apache Kid having gone past wildly, bringing down one man and one horse with his two running shots), than the four men, seeing my predicament, swung to their horses' backs, opened out, and two of them passing, one on either side of me, swung from their saddles and yanked me up by my arms.

Then full tilt they charged down the centre of the plain, intending evidently to make the rising knoll, of which I spoke, in the valley's centre. And with me lying across Farrell's saddle, they doubtless thought they had the key to the Lost Cabin. But Apache Kid wheeled his horse below, and Donoghue mounted again above, and from the hill-crest the half-breed spurred down, and so these three set after us, converging on each other as they came.

But Farrell's mount was falling behind with the burden of my extra weight, and they wheeled sharp to left and put their horses directly to the cliff-front. These ponies can do marvels in climbing, but they were over-jaded, having been very hard ridden, and right on the slope it was evident that not only the half-breed, but Larry next, and Apache Kid following, were coming within effect range. It was Farrell who proposed their move then, considering that with me in their hands half the battle was won if only they had something in the way of a fort from which to stave off attack. So they flung off there, and, letting their horses go, up they came, dragging me along. But at the foot of the hill the others stopped, seeing how they had all the odds against them then and were so fully exposed. For it had not yet occurred to them, as indeed was very natural it should not, that the last thing these men wanted to do was to fire upon them.

The intention of this little company of cut-throats had been to follow up softly in the rear, as near as possible without being seen by us, until we came to our journey's end. What they had planned for us then it is, perhaps, needless to so much as hint. Little did they think that between them and us was Mr. Pinkerton, carrying the news of their possible pursuit. But when they saw him riding out of that plain, with the half-breed, the whole reason for his presence there was guessed by them, especially when they saw us halted within sight, the whole three of us turned round as though already watching for their approach. It was, undoubtedly, this upsetting of their plans that made them so short-tempered and snappish with one another.

But by now I think even Farrell was convinced that I was useless to them in so far as the giving of information went. And so I was now to be used as a hostage,--a sort of living breastwork before them,--as though they were to say: "See! if you fire, you kill your partner!"

Farrell laughed loud at Apache Kid's suggestion.

"Why," said he, "you talk as if you held the trumps; but you don't. And for why? Why, because we do." And he spat in the sand and put a hand on either hip. "We don't need our horses, my mates and me. We ain't in any hurry, and can set here as long as you like,--aye, or go away when we like, for that matter. What we want is that Lost Cabin Mine, and if you don't tell us where it is, why, then we'll let the wind out of your partner here."

"And where do we come in?" yelled Donoghue, rearing up beside his bush.

"Oh!" said Farrell, insolently, "are you talking, too? Well, you don't come in at all. There you are! That's something for you to consider!"

Donoghue broke out in a roar of laughter.

"Oh," he said, "the lad is nothing to us. You can do what you like with him."

Apache Kid turned upon him with a glance as of astonishment, and then again to Farrell he said:

"I 'll give you the offer we came up with, and you and your two mates can consider it."

"Three mates, you mean," snapped Farrell.

"Na! Na!" cried Donoghue. "When I look along a rifle I never err."

"Oh, it was you did it?" cried Farrell. "Well, what's your offer?"

"This is our offer," said Apache Kid. "You can come along with us. We are three, and so are you, and we can split the Lost Cabin between us."

Farrell turned to his two companions and looked a question at them.

"I guess you 'd better take that," said the man Dan, "for I reckon even if we did suggest killing this kid, it would n't bring the facts out of 'em."

"And anyhow," said the other, him they called Pete, speaking low, but yet I caught the drift of his words, "we can easy enough fix them all when we get there."

"Come on!" said Apache Kid. "How does our offer strike you? Are you aware that every hour we delay there may be others getting closer to the Lost Cabin Mine?"

"Take the offer, man. Take the offer," said Pete and Dan.

"All right," cried Farrell. "But mind, we're bad men, and this will have to be run on the square."

Donoghue laughed, and for a moment, as I looked at him, I saw an evil glitter in his eye. "Oh, yes!" he ejaculated, "we 're all bad men here."

My three captors made no delay; but as for their fallen friend, they paid no heed to him. Only Farrell took the cartridges from his belt and ran his hands through the pockets, which contained a knife, a specimen of ore, two five-dollar bills, and a fifty-cent piece.

For my part, I had the utmost difficulty in getting to my legs, and still more in descending the face of the precipice. I noticed, too, that Farrell kept close by my side, as though he thought still that it was as well to have me between Apache Kid and himself.

Just as we came down the rise, there was Mr. Pinkerton leading the horses along toward us.

"Say!" cried Farrell. "What about him?" And he pointed to Pinkerton.

"O!" said Apache Kid. "He wants nothing to do with this expedition whatever."

Then suddenly Farrell's face lighted with a new thought. "And he goes down to the camps and blabs the whole thing, eh?"

"I believe he won't say a word about it,--neither he nor the half-breed here."

Farrell seemed scarcely convinced, and we went down in silence a little way. Then suddenly he said: "I think you 've got some game on. Say! do you swear you are on the square with us?"

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

*CHAPTER XIII*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I looked round the group at the fire again.

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

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

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

Farrell looked across at Apache Kid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every eye was fixed anxiously on him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farrell turned on him with a leer and laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XIV*

_*Apache Kid Prophesies*_

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The hosses! Where's the hosses?"

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

Dan leapt to his feet.

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

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

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

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

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

We all turned to him in wonder.

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

"What you mean?" cried Farrell.

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

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

"Even so!" replied Apache Kid.

Farrell glared before him speechless.

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

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

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

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

"I don't know what you mean," said Farrell, like a man scenting something beyond him.

"No," said Apache Kid. "I understand that. You will require some other method used upon you. I don't know if it was, as you suggested, the gentleman's religion that was to blame for it, but he suffered from the fear of man. That was why he went away. Now you, Farrell, I don't think you fear man, God----"

"No! Nor devil!" cried Farrell.

"Nor no more do I!" said Dan, turning on Apache Kid. "Nor no more do I. And if the loss o' the hosses don't cut any figure to you, it don't no more to us, for we 're goin' through with you right to the end."

But I thought that a something about his underlip, as I saw it in the shadows of the fire, belied his strong statement. Apache Kid was of my opinion, for he looked keenly in Dan's face and remarked: "A very good bluff, Daniel."

"Don't you Daniel me!" cried the man. "You 're gettin' too derned fresh and frisky and gettin' to fancy yourself."