"Well," said he, "this period of the history of the West is a transition
period. The old order changeth, giving place to new. Fists are
settling trouble that was formerly settled with the gun. But the
trouble of the transition period is that you can never be sure whether
it's to be a gun or the fists. Men like that drummer, too, carry a
gun--but they carry it out of sight and you don't know it's there for
certain. I advocate the gun carried openly; and I think you should
begin right away learning its use. I must look up that remark of
Carlyle's, first time I can, about the backwoods being the place where
manners flourish. I want to see from the context if he did n't really
mean it. Most people think it was sarcasm, but if it was, it should n't
have been. Manners do flourish in all backwoods, until the police come
in and the gun goes out, and it's the presence of the gun that keeps
everybody mannerly. The gun does it. Now see--you hold a revolver like
this," and he exemplified as he spoke. "The usual method of grasping a
revolver is with the forefinger pressing the trigger, and even many
experts follow this method; but, with all due respect to the advocates
of that method, it is not the best. The best way to hold a revolver is
with the second finger pressing the trigger, the forefinger extending
along the side of the barrel like this, you see. That is the great
desideratum in endeavouring to make a shot with a revolver--keeping the
thing steady. It kicks under the muscular action required to pull the
trigger with the forefinger, and unless one is thoroughly practised the
bullet will fly above the mark aimed at. Remember, too, to grip tight,
or with these heavy guns you may get your thumb knocked out. Then you
throw your hand up and bring it down and just point at what you want to
kill--like that!"
"Biff!" went the revolver, and I saw the top leaves on a sage-brush fly
in the air.
The horses snorted and leapt forward and the driver flung a look over
his shoulder, a gleeful look, and, gathering the reins again, cried out,
"My gosh, boys! Keep it up, and we 'll make speed into Camp Kettle.
Say, this is like old days!" he cried again, when Apache Kid snapped a
second time and we went rocking onward.
So we "kept it up," Apache indicating objects for me to aim at, watching
my manner of aiming, and coaching me as we went. It seemed to be
infectious, for the traveller who had before kept to himself whipped out
a "gun" from some part of his clothing and potted away at the one side
while we potted at the other. The other two, the one who had suppered
on cheese, pickles, and whisky, and breakfasted on the same, like
enough, and the man with whom he had struck up an acquaintanceship,
wheeled about and potted backwards; and at that the driver grew
absolutely hilarious, got out his whip and cracked it loud as the
revolver shots, crying out now and again: "Say, this is the old times
back again!" and so we volleyed along the uneven road till dusk fell on
the mountains to north and the bronze yellow plain to south and sunset
crimsoned the western sky. And lights were just beginning to be lit
when, in a flutter of dust and banging of the leathern side-blinds and
screaming of the gritty wheels, we came rocking down the hillside into
Camp Kettle.
But at sight of that Apache Kid turned to me, and with the look of a man
suddenly recollecting, he said, in a tone of one ashamed: "Well, well!
Here we are advertising ourselves for all we 're worth, when our plan
should have been one of silence and self-effacement."
"Well," said I, "we can creep quietly up to bed when we reach the hotel
here, and let no one see us, if that is what you are anxious about."
"You 'll have no more bed now, Francis," he said quietly. "No more bed
under a roof, no more hotel now until----" and here for the first time
he acknowledged in actual, direct speech the goal of our journey, "until
we lie down to sleep with our guns in our hands and our boots on----" he
put his mouth to my ear and whispered, "in the Lost Cabin."
*CHAPTER IX*
_*First Blood*_
It would hardly astonish me, and certainly not offend me, to know that
you found a difficulty in believing possible such a sight as Camp Kettle
presented on our arrival. It made me shudder to see it, and the picture
is one that I never remember without melancholy.
"They seem to be celebrating here," said he of the red eyes as a hideous
din of shrieking and curses came up to us.
And "celebrating" they were, that day being, as Apache Kid now
recollected, the anniversary of the first discovery of mineral in that
place. Of such a kind was this celebration that the stage-driver had to
dismount and drag no fewer than three drunken men from the road, which
irritated him considerably, spoiling as it did his final dash up to the
hotel door. But it served our turn better; for here, before entering
Camp Kettle, we alighted.
Camp Kettle is built in the very midst of the woods, the old veterans of
the forest standing between the houses which stretch on either side of
the waggon road, looking across the road on each other from between the
firs, so that a traveller coming to the place by road is fairly upon it
before he is well aware. But on that day--or night--there were strips
of bunting hanging across the waggon road, not from the houses, for they
were all mere log huts, but from the trees on either side; and the
forest rang with shouting and drunken laughter. Just where we alighted
were several great, hewn stones by the roadside, with marks of much
trampling around them.
"There 's been a rock-drilling contest here," said Apache Kid, pointing
to the holes in the centre of these rocks, as we struck into the bush
and came into Kettle from behind.
Here and there, backward from the front huts, were others dotted about
in cleared spaces, and all were lit up, and doors standing open and men
coming and going, lurching among the wandering tree-roots and falling
over stumps still left there. And the whole bush round about you might
have thought the scene of a recent battle, what with the drunken men
lying here and there in all manner of attitudes, with twisted bodies and
sprawled legs.
Some few fellows in their coming and going spoke to us, crying on us to
"come and have a drink," but it was only necessary for us to move on
heedlessly so as to evade them--so dazed and puzzled were they all and
seemed to lose sight of us at once, wheeling about and crying out to the
twilit woods. At some of the cabins horses stood hitched, snorting and
quivering ever and again, their ears falling back and pricking forward
in terror.
"For once," said Apache Kid to me, "I have to be grateful for the
presence of the despised Dago and the Chinee. The Dago may be a little
fuddled, but not too much to attend to our wants in the way of horses,
and he is not likely to talk afterwards. The Chinee will be perfectly
calm among all this, and he, for a certainty, will not speak. Here's
the Chinee joint. Come along."
He thrust open the door of a long, low house and we entered into a babel
of talk, that ceased on the instant, and closed the door behind us.
We had a glimpse of a back room with a group of Chinamen who looked up
on us with eyes a trifle agitated, but, I suppose on seeing that we were
not the worse of liquor, they bent again over their tables, and we heard
the rattle of dominoes again and their quick, voluble, pattering talk.
A very staid, calm-faced Chinaman, his high forehead lit up by a lamp
which hung over a desk by which he stood, turned to us, and, looking on
us through large horn spectacles, bowed with great dignity.
"Good evening," said Apache Kid.
"Good evening," said he.
"We want three mats of rice," said Apache Kid, and this placid gentleman
called out a word or two to one of his assistants, and the rice was
hauled down from the shelf. Then we bought three small bags of flour
and two sides of bacon, and all this was tied up for us and set by the
door to await our return; and off we went out of that place with the
smell of strange Eastern spices in our nostrils.
"Not so long ago," said Apache Kid, "these fellows would not have been
tolerated here at all. Then they were allowed an entrance and
tolerated; but they only sold rice to begin with, and nothing more,
except, perhaps, cranberries, to the hotel, which they gathered on the
foothills. Now, as you see, they run a regular store. But on such
nights as this it behooves them to keep indoors lest the white populace
regret having allowed them within their gates. But John Chinaman is
very wise. He keeps out of sight when it is advisable. Here's the
livery stable."
The stout Italian who stood at the door of the stable, toying with a
cigarette, frowned on us through the darkness, and seemed a trifle
astonished, I thought, at our request for horses. But he bade us follow
him, and by the aid of two swinging lamps Apache Kid selected three
horses, two for riding and one pack-horse.
"But you ain't pull out to-night, heh?" said the Italian in his broken
English.
"Yes," said Apache.
"You going down to Placer Camp or up to mountains?"
Apache Kid was drawing the cinch tight on the pony I was to ride (the
Italian was saddling the other), and he merely turned and shot the
questioner such a look as made me feel--well, that I should not like to
be the Italian.
I thought then that, for all his slim build, this partner of mine, so
quiet, so deliberate, must have seen and done strange things in his day,
and been in peculiar corners to learn a glance like that. If ever a
look on a man's face could cow another, it was such a look as Apache Kid
flung to the Italian then.
Back to the Chinese store we went, leading our steeds, and there roped
on our pack.
"Do you sell rifles?" asked Apache Kid.
"Yes, sir, vely good line," and so Apache added a Winchester, which was
thrust atop of the load, and two of the small boxes of cartridges.