The Lost Cabin Mine

THE
LOST CABIN
MINE

FREDERICK NIVEN

New York
DODD, MEAD 6 COMPANY
1929

title page

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

TO MY SISTER

Contents

CHAPTER

[Introduces "The Apache Kid" with whom Later I become Acquainted]
[Mr. Laughlin Tells the Story up to Date]
[Mr. Laughlin's Prophecy is Fulfilled]
[I Take my Life in my Hands]
[I Agree to "Keep the Peace" in a New Sense]
[Farewell to Baker City]
[The Man with the Red Head]
[What Befell at the Half-Way House]
[First Blood]
[In the Enemy's Camp]
[How it was Dark in the Sunlight]
[I am Held as a Hostage]
[In which Apache Kid Behaves in his Wonted Way]
[Apache Kid Prophesies]
[In which the Tables are Turned—at Some Cost]
[Sounds in the Forest]
[The Coming of Mike Canlan]
[The Lost Cabin is Found]
[Canlan Hears Voices]
[Compensation]
[Re-enter—The Sheriff of Baker City]
[The Mud-Slide]
[The Sheriff Changes his Opinion]
[For Fear of Judge Lynch]
[The Making of a Public Hero]
[Apache Kid Makes a Speech]
[The Beginning of the End]
[Apache Kid Behaves Strangely at the Half-Way House to Kettle]
[So-Long]
[And Last]

The Lost Cabin Mine

CHAPTER I

Introduces "The Apache Kid" with Whom Later
I Become Acquainted

he Lost Cabin Mine, as a name, is familiar to many. But the true story of that mine there is no man who knows. Of that I am positive—because "dead men tell no tales."

It was on the sixth day of June, 1900, that I first heard the unfinished story of the Lost Cabin, the first half of the story I may call it, for the story is all finished now, and in the second half I was destined to play a part. Of the date I am certain because I verified it only the other day when I came by accident upon a pile of letters, tied with red silk ribbon and bearing a tag "Letters from Francis." These were the letters I sent to my mother during my Odyssey and one of them, bearing the date of the day succeeding that I have named, contained an account, toned down very considerably, as I had thought necessary for her sensitive and retired heart, of the previous day's doings, with an outline of the strange tale heard that day. That nothing was mentioned in the epistle of the doings of that night, you will be scarcely astonished when you read of them.

I was sitting alone on the rear verandah of the Laughlin Hotel, Baker City, watching the cicadi hopping about on the sun-scorched flats, now and again raising my eyes to the great, confronting mountain, the lower trees of which seemed as though trembling, seen through the heat haze; while away above, the white wedge of the glacier, near the summit, glistened dry and clear like salt in the midst of the high blue rocks.

The landlord, a thin, quick-moving man with a furtive air, a straggling apology for a moustache, and tiny eyes that seemed ever on the alert, came shuffling out to the verandah, hanging up there, to a hook in the projecting roof, a parrot's cage which he carried.

His coming awoke me from my reveries.

"Hullo," he said: "still setting there, are you? Warmish?"

"Yes."

"You ain't rustled a job for yourself yet?" he inquired, touching the edge of the cage lightly with his lean, bony fingers to stop its swaying.

I shook my head. I had indeed been sitting there that very moment, despite the brightness of the day, in a mood somewhat despondent, wondering if ever I was to obtain that long-sought-for, long-wished-for "job."

"Been up to the McNair Mine?" he asked.

I nodded.

"The Bonanza?"

I nodded again.

"The Poorman?"

"No good," I replied.

"Well, did you try the Molly Magee?"

"Yes."

"And?" he inquired, elevating his brows.

"Same old story," said I. "They all say they only take on experienced men."

He looked at me with a half-smile, half-sneer, and the grey parrot hanging above him with his head cocked on one side, just like his master's, ejaculated:

"Well, if this don't beat cock-fighting!"

Shakespeare says that "what the declined is he will as soon read in the eyes of others as feel in his own fall." I was beginning to read in the eyes of others, those who knew that I had been in this roaring Baker City almost a fortnight and was still idle, contempt for my incapacity. Really, I do not believe now that any of them looked on me with contempt; it was only my own inward self-reproach which I imagined there, for men and women are kindlier than we think them in our own dark days. But on that and at that moment it seemed to me as though the very parrot jeered at me.

"You don't savvy this country," said the landlord. "You want always to say, when they ask you: 'Do you understand the work?' 'why sure! I'm experienced all right; I never done nothing else in my life.' You want to say that, no matter what the job is you 're offered. If you want ever to make enough money to be able to get a pack-horse and a outfit and go prospectin' on your own, that's what you want to say."

"But that would be to tell a downright lie," said I.

"Well," drawled the landlord, lifting his soft hat between his thumb and his first finger and scratching his head on the little bald part of the crown with the third finger, the little finger cocked in the air; "well, now that you put it that way—well, I guess it would. I never looked at it that way before. You see, they all ask you first pop: 'Did you ever do it before?' You says: 'Yes, never did anything else since I left the cradle.' It's just a form of words when you strike a man for a job."

I broke into a feeble laugh, which the parrot took up with such a raucous voice that the landlord turned and yelled to it: "Shut up!"

"I don't have to!" shrieked the parrot, promptly, and you could have thought that his little eyes sparkled with real indignation. Just then the landlord's wife appeared at the door.

"See here," cried Mr. Laughlin, turning to her, "there 's that parrot o' yourn, I told him to shut up his row just now, and he rips back at me, 'I don't have to!' What you make o' that? Are you goin' to permit that? Everything connected with you seems conspirin' agin' me to cheapen me—you and your relations what come here and put up for months on end, and your—your—your derned old grey parrot!"

"Abraham Laughlin," said the lady, her green eyes flashing, "you bin drinkin' ag'in, and ef you ain't sober to-morrow I go back east home to my mother."

It gave me a new thought as to the longevity of the human race to hear Mrs. Laughlin speak of her mother back east. I hung my head and studied the planking of the verandah, then looked upward and gazed at the far-off glacier glittering under the blue sky, tried to wear the appearance of a deaf man who had not heard this altercation. Really I took the matter too seriously. Had I only known it at the time, they were a most devoted couple and would—not "kiss again with tears" and seek forgiveness and reconciliation, but—speak to each other most kindly, as though no "words" had ever passed between them, half an hour later. But at the time of the little altercation on the verandah, when Mrs. Laughlin gave voice to her threat and then, turning, stalked back into the hotel, Laughlin wheeled about with his head thrust forward, showing his lean neck craning out of his wide collar, and opened his lips as though to discharge a pursuing shot. But the parrot took the words out of his mouth, so to speak, giving a shriek of laughter and crying out: "Well, if this don't beat cock-fighting!"

The landlord looked up quizzically at the bird and then there was an awkward pause. I wondered what to say to break this silence that followed upon the exhibition of the break in the connubial bliss of my landlord and his wife. Then I remembered something that I decidedly did want to ask, so I was actually more seeking information than striving to put Mr. Laughlin at his ease again, when I said:

"By the way, what is all this talk I hear about the Lost Cabin Mine? Everybody is speaking about it, you know. What is the Lost Cabin Mine? What is the story of it? People seem just to take it for granted that everybody knows about it."

"Gee-whiz!" said the landlord in astonishment, wheeling round upon me. He stretched out a hand to a chair, dragged it along the verandah, and sat down beside me in the shadow. "You don't know that story? Why, then I 'll give you all there is to it so far. And talking about the Lost Cabin, now there's what you might be doin' if on'y you had the price of an outfit—go out and find it, my bold buck, and live happy ever after——"

He stopped abruptly, for a man had come out of the hotel and now stood meditating on the verandah. He was a lithe, sun-browned fellow, this, wearing a loose jacket, wearing it open, disclosing a black shirt with pearl buttons. Round his neck was a great, cream-coloured kerchief that hung half down his back in a V shape, as is the manner with cowboys and not usual among miners. This little detail of the kerchief was sufficient to mark him out in that city, for the nearest cattle ranch was about two hundred miles to the south-east and when the "boys" who worked there sought the delights of civilisation it was not to Baker City, but to one of the towns on the railroad, such as Bogus City or Kettle River Gap, that they journeyed. On his legs were blue dungaree overalls, turned up at the bottom as though to let the world see that he wore, beneath the overalls, a very fine pair of trousers. On his head was a round, soft hat, not broad of brim, but the brim in front was bent down, shading his eyes. The cream-colour of his kerchief set off his healthy brown skin and his black, crisp hair. There were no spurs in his boots; for all that he had the bearing of one more at home on the plains than in the mountains. A picturesque figure he was, one to observe casually and look at again with interest, though he bore himself without swagger or any apparent attempt at attracting attention, except for one thing, and that was that in either ear there glistened a tiny golden ear-ring. His brows were puckered as in thought and from his nostrils came two long gusts of smoke as he stood there biting his cigar and glaring on the yellow sand and the chirring cicadi. Then he raised his head, glancing round on us, and his face brightened.

"Warmish," he said.

"That's what, right warmish," the proprietor replied affably, and now the man with the ear-rings, having apparently come to the end of his meditations, stepped lightly off into the loose sand and Laughlin jogged me with his elbow and nodded to me, rolling his eyes toward the departing man as though to say, "Take a good look at him, and when he is out of earshot I shall tell you of him." This was precisely the proprietor's meaning.

"That's Apache Kid," he said softly at last, and when Apache Kid had gone from sight he turned again to me and remarked, with the air of a man making an astounding disclosure:

"That's Apache Kid, and he's in this here story of the Lost Cabin. Yap, that's what they call him, though he ain't the real original, of course. The real original was hanged down in Lincoln County, New Mexico, about twenty-five year back. Hanged at the age of twenty-one he was, and had killed twenty-one men, which is an interesting fact to consider. That's the way with names. I know a fellow they call Texas Jack yet, but the real original died long ago. I mind the original. Omohundro was his correct name; as quiet a man as you want to see, Jack B. Omohundro, with eyes the colour of a knife-blade. But I 'm driftin' away. What you want to get posted up on is the Lost Cabin Mine."

He jerked his chair closer to me, tapped me on the knee, and cleared his throat; but I seemed fated not to hear the truth of that mystery yet, for Mrs. Laughlin stood again on the verandah.

"Abraham," she said in an aggrieved tone, "there ain't nobody in the bar."

Up jumped Abraham, his whole bearing, from his bowed head to his bent knees, apologetic.

"I was just tellin' this gentleman a story," he explained.

"I 'm astonished at you then," she said. "An old man like you a-telling your stories to a young lad like that! You 'd be doin' better slippin' into the bar and takin' a smell at that there barkeep's breath."

Mr. Laughlin turned to me.

"Come into the bar, sir; come into the bar. We 've got a new barkeep and the mistress suspects him o' takin' some more than even a barkeep is expected to take. I hev to take a look to him once in a while."

Mrs. Laughlin disappeared into her own sanctum, satisfied; while the "pro-prietor" and I went into the bar-room.

The "barkeep" was polishing up his glasses. In one corner sat a grimy, bearded man in the prime of life but with a dazed and lonely eye. He always sat in that particular corner, as by ancient right, morning, noon, and evening, playing an eternal solitary game of cards, the whole deck of cards spread before him on a table. He moved them about, changing their positions, lifting here and replacing there, but, though I had watched him several times, I could never discover the system of his lonely game.

"Who is that man?" I quietly inquired. "He is always playing there, always alone, never speaking to a soul."

"The boys call him 'The Failure,'" Laughlin explained. "You find a man like that in the corner of most every ho-tel-bar you go into in this here Western country—always a-playing that there lonesome game, I 'm always scared to ask 'em what the rudiments o' that game is for they 're always kind o' rat-house,—of unsound mind, them men is. I heerd a gentleman explain one day that it's a great game for steadyin' the head. He gets a remittance from England, they say. Anyhow, he stands up to the bar once every two months and blows himself in for about three-four days. Then he goes back to his table there and sets down to his lonesome card game again and frowns away over it for another couple o' months. I guess that gentleman was right in what he explained. I guess he holds his brains together on that there game."

We found seats in a corner of the room and Laughlin again cleared his throat. He had a name for taking a real delight in imparting information and spinning yarns, true, fictitious, and otherwise, to his guests, and this time we were not interrupted. He told me the story of the Lost Cabin Mine, or as much of that story as was known by that time, ere his smiling Chinese cook came to inform him "dinnah vely good. Number A1 dinnah to-day, Misholaughlin, ledy in half-oh."

CHAPTER II

Mr. Laughlin Tells the Story up to Date

r. Laughlin's suggestion that I should go out and look for this Lost Cabin and, finding it, "live happy ever after," made me but the more anxious to hear all that was to be told regarding it.

"Well, about this here Lost Cabin Mine," he said. "There's a little, short, stubby fellow that you maybe have noticed around here, with a pock-marked face,—Mike Canlan, they call him. He was up to Tremont putting in assessment on a claim he has in the mountains there away, and he was comin' along back by the trail on the mountains that runs kind o' parallel with the stage road, but away up on the hills, and there he picks up a feller nigh dead,—starved to death, pretty nigh. Mike gets him up on his pack-horse and comes along slow down through the mountain till he hits the waggon road from the Poorman. There a team from the Poorman Mine makes up on him. That there fellow, Apache Kid, was drivin' the team, and along with him was Larry Donoghue, a partner o' his, with another team. They had been haulin' up supplies for one of the stores, and was comin' down light. They offer to help Canlan down with the dying man, seein' as how the hoss was gettin' pretty jaded with all Canlan's outfit on its back, and this here man, too, tied on, and wabbling about mighty weak."

Laughlin broke off here to nod his head sagaciously. "From what has transpired since, I guess Canlan was kind o' sorry he fell in with them two, and I reckon he wondered if there was no kind of an excuse he could put up for rejecting their offer o' service and continuin' to pack the feller down himself. Anyways, they got the man into the Apache's waggon, and my house bein' the nighest to the waggon road and the mountain, they pulled up at my door and we all carries the fellow up to a room. I was at the door. Canlan was sitting on the bed-foot. Apache Kid and Larry Donoghue was laying him out comf'able. The fellow groans and mumbles something, and Canlan gave a bit of a start forward, and says he: 'There, there now, that 'll do; you 've got him up all right. I reckon that's all that's wanted. You can go for a doctor, now, if you want to help at all.' There was something kind o' strained in his voice, and I think Apache Kid noticed it the way he looks round. 'Why,' he says, 'I think, seein' as you,' and he stops and looks Canlan plumb in the eye, 'seein' as you found the man, you had better fetch the doctor and finish your job. My partner and I will sit by him till the doctor comes.' Canlan looked just a little bit rattled when Apache Kid says, lookin' at the man in the bed: 'He seems to have got a kind o' a knock on the head here.' 'Yes,' says Canlan, 'I got him where he had fallen down. I reckon he got that punch then.' And then Apache Kid looks at Larry Donoghue, and Larry looks at him, and they both smile, and Canlan cries out: 'Oh, if that's what you think, why I 'll go for the doctor without any more ado!'"

Laughlin paused, and, "You savvy the idea?" he asked.

"Not quite," I said.

He tapped me on the knee, and, bending forward, said: "Don't you see, Apache Kid and Larry hed no suspicions o' foul play at all, but they was wanting to get alone in the room with the feller, and this was just Apache's bluff to get a move on Canlan. Canlan was no sooner gone than Apache Kid asks me to fetch a glass o' spirits. It was only thinkin' it over after that I saw through the thing; anyhow, I come down for the glass, and when I got up, derned if they did n't hev the man propped up in bed, and him mumblin' away and them bendin' over him listening eager to him. They gave him the liquor, and he began talking a trifle stronger, and took two-three deep gusts o' breath. Then he began mumblin' again."

Mr. Laughlin looked furtively round and then, leaning forward again, thrust his neck forward and with infinite disgust in his voice said: "And damn me if that wife o' mine did n't come to the stair-end right then and start yellin' on me to come down."

Laughlin shook his head sadly. "Seems her derned old parrot was shoutin' for food and as it had all give out she wants me to go down to the store for some more. But I must say that she had just come in herself and did n't know nothin' about the business that was goin' on upstairs. When Canlan and the doctor did arrive and go up the fellow was dead—sure thing—dead as—dead as—" he searched for the simile without which he could not speak for long. "Dead as God!" he said in a horrible whisper, raising his grey eyebrows.

I shuddered somehow at the words, and yet in such a red-hot, ungodly place as Baker City I could almost understand the phrase. There was another pause after that and then Laughlin cleared his throat again and held up a lean finger in my face.

"There's where the place comes in," said he, "where you says 'the plot thickens,' for I 'm a son of a gun if word did n't come down next day that the fellers up at the Poorman Mine had picked up just such another dead-beat. This here corpse of which I bin tellin' you was indemnified after as having been in company with the other. But the man the Poorman boys picked up was jest able to tell them that he had seen the lights o' their bunk-house and was trying to make for it. Told them that he and two partners had struck it rich in the mountains, pow'ful rich, he said, and hed all been so fevered like that they let grub run out. Then they went out looking for something to shoot up and could n't find a thing. One of 'em went off then to fetch supplies, lost his way in them mountains, wanders about nigh onto a week—and hits their own camp ag'in at the end o' that time. Isn't it terrible? You'd think that after striking it luck jest turned about and hed a laugh at 'em for a change. They comes rushin' on him, the other two, expecting grub— Grub nothing! He was too derned tired to budge then, and so the other two sets out then— This fellow what the Poorman boys picked up was doin' his level best to tell 'em where the place was, for the sake of his partner left there, and in the middle of his talk he took a fit and never came out of it. All they know is that there was a cabin built at the place. That's the story for you."

"But what about the man who was brought down here; did he not leave any indication?"

"Now you 're askin'," said Laughlin. "But I see you bin payin' attention to this yere story. Now you're askin'. Nobody knows whether he did or not. But this I can tell you—that Apache Kid and Larry Donoghue has done nothing since then but jest wander about with the tail of an eye on Canlan, and Canlan returns the compliment. And here 's miners comin' in from the Poorman and stoppin' in town a night and trying to fill Apache Kid and his mate full, and trying the same on Canlan to get them to talk, and them just sittin' smilin' through it all, and nobody knows what they think."

"But," said I, "if they do know, could the three of them not come to some agreement and go out and find the place? If the third man is dead there, I suppose the mine would be theirs and they could share on it. Besides, while they stay here doubtless other men will be out looking for the cabin."

The landlord listened attentively to me.

"Well," said he, "as for your first remark, Canlan is too all-fired hard a man to make any such daffy with them, and there's just that touch of the devil in Apache Kid and that amount of hang-dog in Donoghue to prevent them making up to Canlan, I reckon. Not but what they pump each other. Sometimes they get out there on the verandah nights, and, you bein' in the know now, you 'll understand what's running underneath everything they say. As for the other men goin' out and looking for a cabin! Shucks! Might as well go and look for that needle you hear people talk about in the haystack. Not but what a great lot has gone out. Most every man in the Poorman Mine went off with a pack-hoss to hunt it, and plenty others too. And between you and me," said the landlord, "I reckon they 're all on the wrong scent. They 're all away along Baker Range, and I reckon they must be on the wrong scent there or else them three others wouldn't be sittin' here in Baker City smiling; that is, if they dew know where the location is."

Just then the Chinese cook arrived quietly on the scene to inform Mr. Laughlin of the progress of dinner. Then a laugh sounded in the passage and Apache Kid entered the bar-room accompanied by a heavy-set, loose-jawed man of thirty years or thereby, a man with a slovenly appearance in his dress and a cruel expression on his face.

"That's them both," said Laughlin, prodding me with his elbow as they marched through the bar and out to the rear verandah where we heard them dragging chairs about, and the harsh voice of the parrot, evidently awakened from his reveries in the sunshine:

"Well, well! If this ain't——" and a dry cackle of laughter.

"They 're lookin' right lively and pleased with themselves," said the proprietor. "I reckon if Canlan comes along to-night it will be worth your while, now that you know the ins and outs of the business, to keep an eye on the three and watch the co-mical game they keep on playin' with each other. But it can't go on forever, that there game. I do hope, if they make a bloody end to it, it don't take place in my house. Times is changed from the old days. I 've seen when it was quite an advertisement to have a bit of shooting in your house some night. And if there was n't enough holes made in the roof and chairs broke, you could make some more damage yourself; and the crowd would come in, and you 'd point out where so-and-so was standing, and where so-and-so was settin', and tell 'em how it happened, and them listening and setting up the drinks all the time. It certainly was good for business, a little shooting now and then, in the old days. But times is changed, and the sheriff we hev now is a very lively man. All the same, we ain't done with Lost Cabin Mine yet—and that ain't no lie."

CHAPTER III

Mr. Laughlin's Prophecy is Fulfilled

sense of exhilaration filled me, as I strolled down town that evening, which I can only ascribe to the rare atmosphere of that part of the world. It was certainly not due to any improvement in my financial condition, nor to any hope of "making my pile" speedily, and to "make a pile" is the predominating thought in men's minds there, with an intensity that is known in few other lands. I was pondering the story of the Lost Cabin Mine as I went, and in my own mind had come to the decision that Apache Kid and his comrade knew the whereabouts of that bonanza. Canlan, I argued, if he knew its locality at all, must have come by his news before he fell in with his rivals on the waggon road, for after that, according to the hotel-keeper's narrative, he had had no speech with the dying man.

I was in the midst of these reflections when I turned into Baker Street, the main street of Baker City. There was a wonderful bustle there; men were coming and going on either sidewalk thick as bees in hiving time; the golden air of evening was laden with the perfume of cigars; indeed, the blue of the smoke never seemed to fly clear of Baker Street on the evenings; and the sound of the many phonographs that thrust their trumpets out from all the stores on that thoroughfare, added to the din of voices and laughter, rose above the sounds of talk, to be precise, with a barbaric medley of hoarse songs and throaty recitations. So much for the sidewalks. In the middle of the street, to cross which one had to wade knee-deep in sand, pack-horses were constantly coming and going and groaning teams arriving from the mountains. To add to the barbarous nature of the scene, now and again an Indian would go by, not with feathered head-dress as in former days, but with a gaudy kerchief bound about his head, tinsel glittering here and there about his half-savage, half-civilised garb, and a pennon of dust following the quick patter of his pony's hoofs. I walked the length of Baker Street and then turned, walking back again with a numb pain suddenly in my heart, for as I turned right about I saw the great, quiet hills far off, and beyond them the ineffable blue of the sky. And there is something in me that makes me always fall silent when amidst the din of men I see the enduring, uncomplaining, undesiring hills. So I went back to the hotel again, and without passing through the bar but going around the house, found the rear verandah untenanted, with its half dozen vacant chairs, and there I sat down to watch the twilight change the hills. But I had not been seated long when a small set man, smelling very strongly of whisky, came out with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and, leaning against one of the verandah props, looked up at the hills, spitting at regular intervals far out into the sand and slowly ruminating a chew of tobacco.

"Canlan, for a certainty," I said to myself, when he, looking toward the door from which he had emerged, attracted by a sudden louder outbreak of voices and rattling of chairs within, revealed to me a face very sorely pock-marked, as was easily seen with the lamplight streaming out on him from the bar. On seeing me he made some remark on the evening, came over and sat down beside me, and asked me why I sat at the back of the hotel instead of at the front.

"Because one can see the hills from here," said I.

He grunted and remarked that a man would do better to sit at the front and see what was going on in the town. Then he rose and, walking to and fro, flung remarks to me, in passing, regarding the doings in the city and the mines and so forth, the local gossip of the place. He had just reverted to his first theme of the absurdity of sitting at the rear of the house when out came Apache Kid and Donoghue and threw themselves into the chairs near me, Donoghue taking the one beside me which Canlan had just vacated. If Canlan thought a man a fool for choosing the rear instead of the front, he was evidently, nevertheless, content to be a fool himself, for after one or two peregrinations and expectorations he drew a chair to the front of the verandah and seated himself, half turned towards us, and began amusing himself with tilting the chair to and fro like a rocker. The valley was all in shadow now, and as we sat there in the silence the moon swam up in the middle of one of the clefts of the mountains, silhouetting for a brief space, ere it left them for the open sky, the ragged edge of the tree-tops in the highest forest.

Apache Kid muttered something, Donoghue growled, "What say?" And it surprised me somewhat to hear the reply: "O! I was only saying 'with how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies.' It's lonesome-like, up there, Larry."

"Aye! Lonesome!" replied Larry with a sigh.

A fifth man joined us then, and, hearing this, remarked: "A man thinks powerful up there."

"That's no lie," Donoghue growled, and so the conversation, if conversation you can call it, went on, interspersed with long spaces of silence, broken only by the gurgling of the newcomer's pipe and Canlan's "spit, spit" which came quicker now. Men are prone in such times as these to sit and exchange truisms instead of carrying on any manner of conversation. Yet to me, not long in the country, there was a touch of mystery in even the truisms.

"I never seen a man who had spent much time in the mountains that was just what you could call all there in the upper story," said the man with the juicy pipe.

"Nor I," said Donoghue.

"They 're all half crazy, them old prospectors," continued the first, "and tell you the queerest yarns about things they 've seen in the mountains and expect you to believe them. You can see from the way they talk that they believe 'em themselves. But I don't see why a man should lose his reason in the hills. If a man lets his brain go when he 's up there, then he don't have any real enjoyment out of the fortune he makes—if he happens to strike it."

The moon was drifted far upward now and all the frontage of the hill was tipped with light green, among the darker green, where the trees that soared above their neighbours caught the light. "And there must be lots of fortunes lying there thick if one knew where to find them," continued the talker of truisms.

"Where?" said Apache in a soft voice.

"In the mountains, in the mountains," was the reply.

"Why do you ask where?" said Donoghue sharply. "Do you think if this gentleman knew where to find 'em he would be sitting here this blessed night?"

I felt my heart take a quicker beat at that. Knowing what I knew of three of these men here I began to see what Mr. Laughlin meant by the "game" they were playing.

"O, he might," said Canlan, now speaking for the first time since Apache's arrival.

"That would be a crazy thing to do," said Donoghue. "That would—a crazy thing—to set here instead of going and locating it."

"O, I don't know about crazy," said Mike. "You see, he might be waiting to see if anybody else knew where it was."

The soft-footed Chinese attendant appeared carrying a lamp which he hung up above our heads, and in the light of it I saw the face of the man whose name I did not know, and he seemed mystified by the turn the conversation had taken. I was looking at him now, thinking to myself that I too would have been mystified had I not been posted in the matter that afternoon, and suddenly I heard Donoghue say: "By God! he knows right enough, Apache," and a gleam of light flashed in my eyes. It was the barrel of a revolver, but not aimed at me. It was in Donoghue's hand, and pointed fairly at Canlan's head. With a sudden intake of my breath in horror I flung out my hand and knocked the barrel up. There was a little shaft of flame, a sharp crack and puff of bitter smoke, and next moment a clatter of feet within and a knot of men thronging and craning at the door, while the window behind was darkened with others shouldering there and pressing their faces against the glass.

"O you——" began Apache, and "What's this?" cried Laughlin, coming out, no coward, as one might imagine, but calm enough and yet angry as I could see.

"What in thunder are you all rubber-necking at the door there for?" cried Apache Kid, springing up.

"Was it you fired that gun?" challenged the landlord.

"No, not I," cried Apache so that all could hear. "Not but what I was the cause of it, by betting my partner here he could n't snap a bat on the wing in the dusk. I never thought he'd try it, but he's as crazy——"

"I crazy!" cried out Donoghue; and to look at him you would have thought him really infuriated by the suggestion; but they knew how to play into each other's hands.

All this time I sat motionless. The stranger rose and passed by, remarking: "This ain't my trouble, I guess," and away indoors he went among the throng, and I heard him cry out in reply to the questions: "I don't know anything about it—saw nothing—I was asleep—I don't even know who fired."

"Haw! Did n't even wake in time to see whose pistol was smoking, eh?"

"No," cried he, "not even in time for that."

"Quite right, you," cried another. But the trouble was not yet quite over on the verandah, for Laughlin, with his little eyes looking very fierce and determined, remarked: "Well, gentlemen, I can't be having any shooting of any kind in my hotel. Besides, you know there 's a law ag'in' carrying weapons here."

"No there ain't!" cried Donoghue. "It's concealed weapons the law is against, and I carry my gun plain for every man to see."

Canlan had sat all this while on his seat as calm as you please, but suddenly the crowd at the door opened out and somebody said: "Say, here 's the sheriff, boys," and at these words two men sprang from the verandah; the one was Donoghue, and Canlan the other. I saw them a moment running helter-skelter in the sand, but when the sheriff made his appearance they were gone.

The sheriff had to get as much of the story as he could from the proprietor, who was very civil and polite, but lied ferociously, saying he did not know who the men were who had been on the verandah.

"I know you, anyhow," said the sheriff, turning on Apache Kid. "Allow me, sir," and walking up to Apache Kid he drew his hand over his pockets and felt him upon the hips.

Then I knew why Canlan, though entirely innocent in this matter, had fled at the cry of "sheriff." He, I guessed, would not have come off so well as Apache Kid in a search for weapons.

At this stage of the proceedings the Chinese attendant passed me, quiet as is the wont of his race, and brushed up against Apache Kid just as the sheriff turned to ask Mr. Laughlin if he could not describe the man who had fired the shot. "I ain't been out on the verandah not for a good hour," began the landlord, when Apache Kid broke in, "Well, Sheriff, I can tell you the name of one of the men who was here."

"O!" said the sheriff, "and what was his name?"

"Mike Canlan," said the Apache Kid, calmly.

"Yes," said the sheriff, looking on him with narrowing eyes, "and the name of the other was Larry Donoghue."

"Could n't very well be Larry," said Apache Kid. "Larry was drunk to-night before sunset, and I believe you 'll find him snoring in room number thirty at this very moment."

The sheriff gazed on him a little space and I noticed, on stealing a glance at Mr. Laughlin, that a quick look of surprise passed over his colourless face.

There was a ring as of respect in the sheriff's voice when, after a long, eye-to-eye scrutiny of Apache Kid, he said slowly: "You 're a deep man, Apache, but you won't get me to play into your hands."

So saying he stepped over to me and for the first time addressed me. "As for you, my lad, I have n't asked you any questions, because it's better that the like of you don't get mixed up at all in these kind of affairs, not even on the right side." He laid his hand on my shoulder in a fatherly fashion, "I 've had my eye on you, as I have my eye on everybody, and I know you 're an honest enough lad and doing your best to get a start here. I ain't even blaming you for being in the middle of this, but you take the advice of a man that has been sheriff in a dozen different parts of the West, and when you see signs of trouble just you go away and leave it. Trouble with a gun seldom springs up between a good man and a bad, but most always between two bad men."

"Is that my character you are soliloquising on?" said Apache Kid. The sheriff turned on him and his face hardened again. "For Heaven's sake, Apache," he said, "if you and Canlan both know where the Lost Cabin is, why can't you have the grit to start off? If he follows you, well, you can fix him. It'll save me a job later on."

"Well, for the sake of the argument," said Apache, "but remember I 'm not saying I know, suppose he followed up and shot me out of a bush some night?"

"I'd be mighty sorry," said the sheriff, "for I think between the pair of you he 's a worse man for the health of the country."

A boyish look came over Apache Kid's face that made me think him younger than I had at first considered him. He looked pleased at the sheriff's words and bowed in a way that betokened a knowledge of usages other than those of Baker City.

"Thank you, Sheriff," he said. "I 'll see what can be done."

Off went the sheriff smartly then, without another word, and Apache Kid turned to me.

"I 've got to thank you for preventing——" he began, and then the Chinaman appeared beside us. "Well, Chink?"

"Maybe that littee jobee woth half a dollah, eh?"

"Did Donoghue give you nothing for bringing the message?"

"Oh, no," and a bland smile. "Mishadonah think you give me half a dollah."

"Well, it was certainly worth half a dollar; but remember, if I find out that Donoghue gave you anything,——"

"Oh yes," said the Chinaman, with a slight look of perturbation, "Mishadonah he gave me half-dollah."

Apache Kid laughed. "Well," he said, "you don't hold up your bluff very long. However, here you are, here's half a dollar to you all the same—for your truthfulness."

I experienced then a feeling of great disgust. Here was this Chinaman lying and wheedling for half a dollar; here just a few minutes gone I had seen murder attempted—and for what? All occasioned again by that lust for gold. And here beside me was a man with a certain likableness about him (so that, as I had observed, even the sheriff, who suspected him, had a warm side to him) lying and humbugging and deceiving. I thought to myself that doubtless his only objection to Larry Donoghue's attempt at murder was because of the prominence of it in this place and the difficulties that would have ensued in proving Larry guiltless had the attempt been consummated. "This man," said I to myself, "for all that likableness in his manner, the kindly sparkle of his eyes, and the smile on his lips, is no better than the hang-dog fellow he sought to shield—worse, indeed, for he has the bearing of one who has had a training of another order." And then I saw Mrs. Laughlin's red head and freckled face and lean, lissome form in the doorway. She was beckoning me to her, and when I made haste to see what she wanted with me she looked on me with much tenderness and said: "You want to remember what the sheriff said to you, my lad. Take my advice and leave that fellow out there alone for to-night. He's a reckless lad and from the way he is talking to you he seems to have taken a fancy to you. But you leave him alone. He 's a deep lad, is Apache Kid, and for all his taking way he leads a life I 'm sure neither his mother would like to see him in, nor your mother (if you have one) would like to see you taking up. There's some says he's little better than the fellow he gets his name from. I 'm sorry for you lads when I see you getting off the trail."

So what with the words of the sheriff and this well-meant talk and my own disgust at all these doings, I made up my mind to keep clear of these three men and not permit my curiosity regarding the Lost Cabin Mine to lead me into their company again. But when I went up to my room, before going to bed, I counted my remaining money and found that I had but seven dollars to my name. I thought to myself then that the Lost Cabin Mine would be a mighty convenient thing to find. And in my dreams that night I wandered up hill and down dale seeking for the Lost Cabin and engaging in hand-to-hand conflicts with all three of these men, Canlan, Donoghue, and the Apache Kid. It was on awakening from one of these conflicts that I lay thinking over all that I had heard of that mysterious Cabin and all that I had seen of the three principally connected with it. Revolving these thoughts in my mind, it occurred to me that it was an unaccountable thing, if all three knew the situation of the mine, that the two who were "partners" should not simply start out for it and risk being followed up and shadowed by Canlan. They were always two to one and could take watch and watch by night lest Canlan should follow and attempt to slay them from the bushes; for that, it would appear, was the chief danger in the matter.

Canlan's dread of starting alone I could understand. Then suddenly I sat upright in bed with the sudden belief that the truth of the matter was that Canlan, and Canlan only, knew of the mine's situation. "But that again can't be," said I, "for undoubtedly Donoghue meant murder to-night and that would be to kill the goose with the golden eggs." I was no nearer a solution of the mystery but I could not dismiss the matter from my mind. "I believe," said I to myself, "that instead of having nothing to do with this Lost Cabin Mine I will yet find out the truth of it from these men. Who knows but what I, even I, may be the one for whom the mine with all its treasure waits?"

CHAPTER IV

I Take My Life in My Hands

fter breakfast on the day following the incident of the verandah I was journeying down town to post two letters, the Lost Cabin Mine still uppermost in my mind, when I came, at the turning into Baker Street, face to face with the man Donoghue. It was clear that he saw me,—he could not help seeing me, so directly were we meeting,—and I wondered if now he would have a word to say to me regarding the part I played on the preceding evening. Sure enough, he stopped; but there was only friendliness on his face and the heaviness of it and the sulkiness were hardly visible when he smiled.

He held out his hand to me with evident sincerity, and said that he had to thank me for preventing what he called "an accident last night."

I smiled at the word, for he spoke it so easily, as though the whole thing were a mere bagatelle to him. "It was right stupid of me," he said. "But Laughlin keeps such bad liquor! Canlan, too, had had too much of it, or he would never have tried to irritate me with his remark." I was trying to recollect the exact words of that remark which Donoghue classified as "irritating" when he interrupted my thoughts with: "The Apache Kid and me has quit the Laughlin House."

"Yes, I did n't see you at breakfast there," said I.

"Was Canlan there?" he asked eagerly.

"Not while I was breakfasting, at any rate," I replied.

He nursed his chin in his hand at that and stood pondering something. Then: "Quite so, quite so," he commented as though to himself. Then to me: "By the way, would you be so kind as to come down this evening to Blaine's? The Apache Kid asked me to try and see you and ask you if you would be good enough to come down."

"Blaine's?" I asked. "Where is Blaine's?"

"Blaine, Blaine, Lincoln Avenue; near the corner of Twenty-second Street."

It amazed me to hear of a Twenty-second Street in this city that boasted only one long street (Baker Street) and six streets running off it. But of course, a street is a street in a new city even though it can boast only of a house at either corner and has nothing between these corner houses but tree-stumps, or sand, or sage-bushes, and little boards thrust into the ground announcing: "This is a sure-thing lot. Its day will come very soon. See about it when it can be bought cheap from ——, Real Estate Agent, office open day and night."

But Donoghue, seeing that I did not know the streets of the city by name, directed me:

"You go right along Baker Street,—you know it, of course, the main street of this progressive burgh?—straight ahead west; turn down third on the right; look up at the store front there and you read 'H.B. Blaine. Makes you think o' Home and Mother.' It's a coffee-joint, you see. There 's a coffee urn in the window and two plates, one with crackers on it and t' other with doughnuts. You walk right in and ask for the Apache Kid—straight goods—no josh." He stopped to give emphasis to the rest and after that pause he said in a meaning tone: "And—you—will—hear—o' something to your advantage."

He nodded sedately and, without giving me time to say anything in reply, moved off. You may be sure I pondered this invitation as I went along roaring Baker Street to the post-office. And I was indeed in two minds about it, uncertain whether to call in at Blaine's or not. Both the sheriff and Mrs. Laughlin had cautioned me against these men, and I had, besides, seen enough of them to know myself that they were not just all that could be desired. The word the sheriff had used regarding Apache Kid's nature, "deep," came into my mind, along with reflections on all his prevarications of the previous day. It occurred to me that it would be quite in keeping with him to pretend gratefulness to me, at the moment, for my interference, and to post up Donoghue to do the same, with the intention in his mind all the while of "getting me in a quiet corner," as the phrase is. I think I may be excused this judgment considering all the duplicity I had already seen him practise. A story that I had heard somewhere of a trap-door in a floor which opened and precipitated whoever stood upon it down into a hole among rats came into my head. Perhaps H. B. Blaine had such a trap-door in his floor. One could believe anything of half the men one saw here, with their blood-shot eyes, straggling hair, and cruel mouths. Still, I had felt real friendliness, no counterfeit, in both Apache Kid last night and Donoghue to-day.

A wave of disgust at my cowardice and suspicion came over me to aid me toward the decision that my curiosity was already crying for and so, when the day wore near an end, I set forth—for Blaine's, the "coffee-joint."

When I got the length of Baker Street I was to see another sight such as only the West could show. The phonographs, as usual, it being now evening, were all grumbling forth their rival songs at the stalls and open windows. The wonted din was in the air when suddenly an eddy began in the crowd on the opposite sidewalk. It was in front of one of the "toughest" saloons in town, and out of that eddy darted a man, hatless, and broke away pell-mell along the street. Next moment the saloon door swung again, and after him there went running another fellow, with a tomahawk in his hand, his hair flying behind him as he ran, his legs straddled wide to prevent him tripping up on his great spurs. Where the third party in this scene sprang from I cannot tell. I only know that he suddenly appeared on the street, habited in a blue serge suit, with a Stars-and-Stripes kerchief round his slouch hat in place of a band, and a silver star on his breast. It was my friend the portly, fatherly, stern sheriff.

"Stop, you!" he cried.

But he with the tomahawk paid no heed, and out shot the sheriff's leg and tripped the man up. The tomahawk flew from his hand and buried itself almost to the end of the handle in the dust of the road.

"Stop, you!" cried the sheriff again to the other fellow, who was still posting on. But the fugitive gave only a quick glance over his shoulder and accelerated his speed. It looked as though he would escape, when down flew the sheriff's hand to his belt, then up above his head. He thrust out his chin vindictively, down came his revolver hand in a half-circle and—it was just as though he pointed at the flying man with his weapon—"flash!" The man took one step more, but not a second. His leg was shot, and he fell. A waggon had stopped on the roadway, the teamster looking on, and him the sheriff immediately pressed into service. The man of the tomahawk rose, and, at a word from the man of law-and-order, climbed into the waggon; he of the shot leg was assisted to follow; the sheriff mounted beside them, and with a brief word to the teamster away went the waggon in a cloud of dust, and whirled round the corner to the court-house. And then the crowd in the street moved on as usual, the talk buzzed, the cigar smoke crept overhead.

"Would n't that jar you?" said a voice in my ear, and turning I found Donoghue by my side. "Just toddling down to Blaine's?"

"Yes," I said, and fell in step with him.

Certainly this little incident I had witnessed on the way reassured me to the extent of making me think that if I was to be shot in the "coffee-joint," there was a lively sheriff in the town, and unless my demise was kept unconscionably quiet he would be by the way of making inquiries.

With no trepidation at all, then, on reading the sign "H. B. Blaine. Makes you think of Home and Mother," I followed Donoghue into the sweet-scented "joint" with the gleaming coffee urn in the window.

He nodded to the gentleman who stood behind the doughnut-heaped counter—H. B. Blaine, I presumed—who jerked his head towards the rear of the establishment.

"Step right in, Mr. Donoghue," he said. "Apache Kid is settin' there."

CHAPTER V

I Agree to "Keep the Peace" in a New Sense

t was at once evident that I was not to be murdered in H. B. Blaine's place, and also evident that I had been invited to meet Apache Kid to hear some matter that was not for all to hear; for immediately on our entering the little rear room he flung aside a paper he had been reading and leaped to his feet to meet us. He put a hand on Donoghue's shoulder and the other he extended to me.

"We'll not talk here," he said. "Walls have ears:" and so we all turned about and marched out again.

"Going out for a strowl?" asked Blaine.

"Yes," said Apache. "Fine night for a strowl." And we found ourselves on the street down which we turned and walked in silence.

Suddenly Apache Kid slowed down and swore to himself.

"I should n't have said that!" he remarked angrily.

"Said what?" Donoghue interrogated.

"O! mocked Blaine like that—said we were going for a strowl."

"What do you mean?" asked Donoghue, whose ear did not seem very acute.

Apache looked at him with a relieved expression.

"Well, that's hopeful," he said. "Perhaps Blaine would n't catch it either. Still, still, I should n't have mocked him. You noticed, I bet?" he said to me.

"Strowl?" I inquired.

He sighed.

"There 's no sense in trying to make fun of anything in a man's clothes or talk or manner. Besides, it's excessively vulgar, excessively vulgar."

"Here 's an interesting 'bad man,'" I mused; but there was no more said till we won clear of the town, quite beyond the last sidewalks that stretched and criss-crossed among the rocks and sand, marking out the prospective streets. There, on a little rising place of sand and rocks, we sat down.

It was a desolate spot. A gentle wind was blowing among the dunes and the sand was all moving, trickling down here and piling up there. Being near sunset the cicadi had disappeared and the evening light falling wan on the occasional tufts of sage-brush gave them a peculiar air of desolation. Donoghue pulled out a clasp-knife and sat progging in the sand with it, and then Apache Kid jerked up his head and smiled on me, a smile entirely friendly. And suddenly as he looked at me his face became grave.

"Have you had supper yet?" he asked.

"No," I said. "It's early yet."

He looked at me keenly and then: "You 'll excuse me remarking on your appearance, but you look extraordinarily tired."

"Oh," said I, lightly, "I have not been feeling just up to the scratch and—well, I thought I 'd try the fasting cure."

He hummed to himself and dived a hand into his trousers pocket and held out a five-dollar bill under my nose.

"There," he said, "go and eat and don't lie any more. I 've been there myself—when I was new to the country and could n't get into its ways."

There was something of such intense warm-heartedness behind the peremptory tones (while Donoghue turned his face aside, running the sand between his fingers and looking foolishly at it) that to tell you the truth, I found the tears in my eyes before I was aware. But this sign of weakness Apache Kid made pretence not to observe.

"We 'll wait here for you till you get fed," said he, examining the back of his hand.

"No, no," I answered hastily, "I had rather hear what you have to say just now." Thank him for his kindness I could not, for I felt that thanks would but embarrass him. "To tell you the truth, the mere knowledge that I need not go to bed hungry is sufficient."

"Well," said he, looking up when my voice rang firm. "The fact is, I am going to offer you a job; but it is a job you might not care to take unless you were hard pressed; so you will please consider that a loan, not a first instalment, and the fact of settling it must not influence."

This was very fairly spoken and I felt that I should say something handsome, but he gave me no opportunity, continuing at once: "Donoghue here and I are wanting a partner on an expedition that we are going on. We 're very old friends, we two, but for quite a little while back we had both been meditating going on this expedition separately. Fact is, we are such very old friends and know each other's weaknesses so well that, though we both had the idea of the expedition in our heads, we did n't care about going together."

All this he spoke as much to Donoghue as to me, with a bantering air; and one thing at least I learned from this—the reason why these two had not done as Laughlin thought the natural thing for them to do, namely, to go out together, heedless of Canlan. For I had no doubt whatever that the expedition was to the Lost Cabin Mine. That was as clear as the sun. Further observation of their natures, if further observation I was to have, might explain their long reluctance to "go partners" on the venture, a reluctance now evidently overcome.

"Get to your job," growled Donoghue, "and quit palaver."

It was evident that Apache Kid was determined not to permit himself to be irritated, for he only smiled on Donoghue's snarl and turned to me: "My friend Donoghue and I," said he, "it is necessary to explain, are such very old friends that we can cordially hate each other."

"At times," interjected Donoghue.

"Yes; upon occasion," said Apache Kid. "To you, new to this country, such a state of things between friends may be scarcely comprehensible, but——" and Apache Kid stopped.

"It's them mountains that does it," said Donoghue, with a heavy frown.

"Them mountains, as Donoghue says; that's it. It's queer how the mountains, when you get among them, seem to creep in all round you and lock you up. It does n't take long among them with a man to know whether you and he belong to the same order and breed. There are men who can never sleep under the same blanket; yes, never sleep on the same side of the fire; never, after two days in the hills, ride side by side, but must get space between them."

His eyes were looking past me on things invisible to me, looking in imagination, I suppose, on his own past from which he spoke.

"And if you don't like your partner, you know it then," Donoghue said. "You go riding along and if he speaks to you, you want him to shut it. And if he don't speak, you ask him what in thunder he's broodin' about. And you look for him to fire up at you then, and if he don't, you feel worse than ever and go along with just a little hell burning against him in here," and he tapped his chest. "You could turn on him and eat him; yes siree, kill him with your teeth in his neck."

"This is called the return to Nature," said Apache Kid, calmly.

"Return to hell!" cried Donoghue, and Apache Kid inclined his head in acquiescence. He seemed content to let Donoghue now do the talking.

"Apache and me has come to an agreement, as he says, to go out on the trail, and though we 've chummed together a heap——"

"In the manner of wolves," said Apache, with a half sneer.

"Yes," said Donoghue, "a good bit like that, too. Well, but on this trail we can't go alone. It's too all-fired far and too all-fired lonely."

His gaze wandered to the mountains behind the town and Apache took up the discourse.

"You see the idea? We want a companion to help us to keep the peace. Foolish—eh? Well, I don't blame you if you don't quite understand. You 're new here. You 've never been in the mountains, day in day out, with a man whose soul an altogether different god or devil made; with a man that you fervently hope, if there's any waking up after the last kick here, you won't find in your happy hunting-ground beyond. You won't have to come in between and hold us apart, you know. The mere presence of a third party is enough."

He looked on me keenly a space and added:

"Somehow I think that you will do more than keep off the bickering spirit. I think you 'll establish amicable relations."

It was curious to observe how the illiterate Donoghue took his partner's speech so much for granted.

"What's amicable?" he said.

"Friendly," said Apache Kid.

"Amicable, friendly," said Donoghue, thoughtfully. "Good word, amicable."

"The trip would be worth a couple of hundred dollars to you," said Apache, with his eyes on mine. "And if we happened to be out over two months, at the rate of a hundred a month for the time beyond."

"Well, that's straight enough talk, I guess," said Donoghue. "Is the deal on?"

My financial condition itself was such as to preclude any doubt. Had I been told plainly that it was to the Lost Cabin Mine we were going and been offered a share in it I would, remembering Apache Kid and Donoghue of the verandah, as I may put it, in distinction from Apache Kid and Donoghue of to-night—well, I would have feared that some heated sudden turn of mind of one or the other or both of these men might prevent me coming into my own. Donoghue especially had a fearsome face to see. But there was no such suggestion. I was offered two hundred dollars and, now that the night fell and the silence deepened and the long range of hills gloomed on us, I thought I could understand that the presence of a third man might be well worth two hundred dollars to two men of very alien natures among the silence and the loneliness that would throw them together closely whether they would or not.

"The deal is on," I said.

We shook hands solemnly then and Donoghue looked toward Apache Kid as though all the programme was not yet completed. Apache Kid nodded and produced a roll of bills. The light was waning and he held them close to him as he withdrew one.

"That'll make us square again," he said, handing me the roll. "I 've kept off a five; so now we 're not obliged to each other for anything."

And then, as though to seal the compact and bear in upon me a thought of the expedition we were going upon, the sun disappeared behind the western hills and from somewhere out there, in the shadows and deeper shadows of the strange piled landscape, came a long, faint sound, half bay, half moan. It was the dusk cry of the mountain coyotes; and either the echo of it or another cry came down from the hills beyond the city, only the hum of which we heard there. And when that melancholy cry, or echo, had ended, a cold wind shuddered across the land; all that loneliness, that by day seemed to lure one ever with its sunlit peaks and its blue, meditative hollows, seemed now a place of terrors and strange occurrences; but the lure was still there, only a different lure,—a lure of terror and darkness instead of romance and sunlight.

CHAPTER VI

Farewell to Baker City

e all came to our feet then, Apache Kid carefully flicking the sand from his clothing.

"Now," he said, "that settles us. We 're quits." And we all walked slowly and silently back in company toward the city. When we came to Blaine's "coffee-joint" Apache Kid stopped, and told me he would see me later in the evening at the Laughlin House to arrange about the starting out on our venture. Donoghue wanted him to go on with him, but Apache Kid said he must see Blaine again before leaving the city.

"I desire to leave a good impression of myself behind me," he said with a laugh. "I should like Blaine to feel sorry to hear of my demise when that occurs, and as things stand I don't think he 'd care, to use the language of the country, a continental cuss."

So saying, with a wave of his hand, he entered Blaine's.

At Baker Street corner Donoghue stopped.

"I 'll be seeing you two days from now," he said.

"Do we not start for two days then?" I asked.

"O, Apache Kid will see you to-night and make all the arrangements about pulling out. So-long, just now."

So I went on to my hotel and, thus rescued from poverty on the very day that I had the first taste of it, I felt very much contented and cheered, and it was with a light and hopeful heart that I wandered out, after my unusually late supper, along the waggon road as far as the foothill woods and back, breathing deep of the thin air of night and rejoicing in the starlight.

When I returned to the hotel there was a considerable company upon the rear verandah, as I could see from quite a distance—dim, shadowy forms sprawled in the lounge chairs with the yellow-lit and open door behind shining out on the blue night, and over them was the lamp that always hung there in the evenings, where the parrot's cage hung by day.

When I came on to the verandah I picked out Apache Kid at once.

A man who evidently did not know him was saying:

"What do you wear that kerchief for, sir, hanging away down your neck that way?"

There were one or two laughs of other men, who thought they were about to see a man quietly baited. But Apache Kid was not the man to stand much baiting, even of a mild stamp.

I think few of the men there, however, understood the nature that prompted him when he turned slowly in his chair and said:

"Well, sir, I wear it for several reasons."

"Oh! What's them?"

"Well, the first reason is personal—I like to wear it."

There was a grin still on the face of the questioner. He found nothing particularly crushing in this reply, but Apache went on softly: "Then again, I wear it so as to aid me in the study of the character of the men I meet."

"O! How do you work that miracle?"

"Well, when I meet a man who does n't seem to see anything strange in my wearing of the kerchief I know he has travelled a bit and seen the like elsewhere in our democratic America. Other men look at it and I can see they think it odd, but they say nothing. Well, that is a sign to me that they have not travelled where the handkerchief is used in this way, but I know that they are gentlemen all the same."

There was a slight, a very slight, exulting note in his voice and I saw the faces of the men on the outside of the crowd turn to observe the speaker. I thought the man who had set this ball a-rolling looked a trifle perturbed, but Apache was not looking at him. He lay back in his chair, gazing before him with a calm face. "Then again," he said leisurely, as though he had the whole night to himself, "if I meet a man who sees it and asks why I wear it, I know that he is the sort of man about whom people say here,—in the language of the country,—'Don't worry about him; he 's a hog from Ontario and never been out of the bush before!'"

There was a strained silence after these words. Some of the more self-reliant men broke it with a laugh. The most were silent.

"I'm a hog—eh? You call me a hog?" cried the man, after looking on the faces of those who sat around. I think he would have swallowed Apache Kid's speech without a word of reply had it not been spoken before so large an audience.

"I did not say so," said Apache Kid, "but if I were you, I would n't make things worse by getting nasty. I tried to josh a man myself this afternoon, and do you know what I did? I called in on him to-night to see whether he had savveyed that I had been trying to josh him. I found out that he had savveyed, and do you know what I did? I apologised to him——"

"D' ye think I 'm going to apologise for askin' you that question?"

"You interrupt me," said Apache Kid. "I apologised to him, I was going to say, like a man. As to whether I think you are going to apologise or not—no."

He turned and scrutinised the speaker from head to toe and back again.

"No," he repeated decidedly. "I should be very much surprised if you did."

"By Moses!" cried the man. "You take the thing very seriously. I only asked you——" and his voice grumbled off into incoherence.

"Yes," said Apache Kid. "I have a name for being very serious. Perhaps I did answer your question at too great length, however."

He turned for another scrutiny of his man, and broke out with such a peal of laughter, as he looked at him, that every one else followed suit; and the "josher," with a crestfallen look, rose and went indoors.

I was still smiling when Apache Kid came over to me.

"Could you be ready to go out to-morrow at noon on the Kettle River Gap stage?" he asked quietly.

"Certainly," said I. "We don't start from here, then?"

"No. That's to say, we don't leave the haunts of men here. It is better not, for our purpose. Have you seen Canlan to-night?"

I told him no, but that I had been out for my evening constitutional and not near the city.

"He does n't seem to be at this hotel to-night. I must go out and try to rub shoulders with him if he's in town. If I see him anywhere around town, I may not come back here to-night. If I don't see him, I 'll look in here later in the hope of rubbing against him. So if you don't see me again to-night, you 'll understand. To-morrow at noon, the Kettle River Gap stage."

But neither Apache Kid nor Canlan put in an appearance all evening, and so I judged that elsewhere my friend had "rubbed against" Canlan.

I was astonished to find on the morrow that I had, somewhere within me, a touch of fondness for Baker City, after all, despitefully though it had used me.

"You should stay on a bit yet," said Mrs. Laughlin, when I told her I was going. "You can't expect just to fall into a good job right away on striking a new town."

"I should never have come here," I explained, "had it not been that I had a letter to a gentleman who was once in the city. The fact is, my people at home did not like the thought of me going out on speck, and the only man in the country I knew was in Baker City. But he had moved on before I arrived."

"And where do you think of going now?" she asked.

I evaded a direct answer, and yet answered truthfully:

"Where I wanted to go was into a ranching country. Mining never took my fancy. I believe there are some ranches on the Kettle River."

"Oh, a terrible life!" she cried out. "They 're a tough lot, them Kettle River boys. They 're mostly all fellows that have been cattle-punching and horse-wrangling all their lives. They come from other parts where the country is getting filled up with grangers and sheepmen. I reckon it's because they feel kind o' angry at their job in life being kind o' took from them by the granger and the sheepmen that they 're so tough. Oh! they 're a tough lot; and they 've got to be, to hold their own. Why, only the other day there a flock o' sheep came along on the range across the Kettle. There was three shepherds with them, and a couple of Colonel Ney's boys out and held them up. The sheep-herders shot one, and the other went home for the other boys, all running blood from another shot, and back they went, and laid out them three shepherds—just laid them out, my boy (d'ye hear?)—and ran the whole flock o' sheep over into a cañon one atop the other. Ney and the rest only wants men that can look after their rights that way——"

How long she might have continued, kindly enough, to seek to dissuade me, I do not know. But I was forced to interrupt her and remind her I should lose the stage.

"Yes," she said, "I might just have kept my mouth shut and saved my breath. You lads is all the same. But mind what I say," she cried after me, "you should stay on here and rustle yourself a good job. You 're just going away to 'get it in the neck.' Maybe you 'll come back here again, sick and sorry. But seein' you 're going, God bless you, my lad!" and I was astonished to see her green eyes moist, and a soft, tender light on her lean, freckled face.

"So-long, then, lad, and good luck to you," said her better half. "If you strike into Baker City again—don't forget the Laughlin House."

I was already in the street, half turning to hear their parting words, and with a final wave I departed, and (between you and me) there was a lump in my throat, and I thought that the Laughlin House was not such a bad sort of place at all to tarry in.

In Baker Street, at the very corner, I saw Apache Kid advancing toward me, but he frowned to me and, when he raised his hand to his mouth to remove his cigar, for a brief moment he laid a finger on his lip, and as he passed me, looking on the ground and walking slowly, he said: "You go aboard the stage yourself and go on."

There was no time to say more in passing, and I wondered what might be the meaning of this. But when I came to where the stage-coach stood, there was Canlan among the little knot of idlers who were watching it preparing for the road. He saw me when I climbed aboard, and, stepping forward, held out his hand. "Hullo, kid," he said, "pulling out?"

"Yes," said I.

"Goin' to pastures green?"

I nodded.

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

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

CHAPTER VII

The Man with the Red Head

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