"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.