"Have they to lie there till--till they are found?"
"Yes," said he, "by the wolves to-night--if the light of the stumps
doesn't keep them off. Failing that, to-morrow--by the buzzards."
I looked round then, scarcely aware of the movement, and there, between
the trees, I saw the clearing with the smouldering, twinkling stumps.
The leader of these two lay with his back and his heels and the broad
soles of his feet toward me; but the other, "the hog from Ontario," lay
looking after us, with his dead eyes and his face lighting and
shadowing, lighting up and shadowing pitifully in that ghastly glow.
I turned round no more. I breathed in relief when we came clear of the
forest into the open, sandy ground; but when I saw the stars thick in
the sky, Orion, Cassiopeia, and Ursa Major, the tears welled in my eyes;
they seemed so far from the terrors of that place.
"I 'll wait till you mount," said Apache Kid, holding my horse's head
while I gathered the reins.
When I raised my foot to the stirrup the beast swerved; but at the third
try I got in my foot, and with a spring gained the high saddle.
Donoghue's mount was walking sedately enough, but all the lean body of
it had an evil look. Apache stood to watch his partner mount to the
saddle. Donoghue flung the reins over the horse's neck and came to its
left. He seemed to remember its nature, despite his condition then, for
he ran his hand over the saddle and gave a tug to the cloth to see that
it was firm. Then with a quick jerk, before the horse was well aware,
he had yanked the cinch up another hole or two. At this, taken by
surprise, the beast put its ears back and hung its head and its tail
between its legs. Donoghue pulled his hat down on his head, caught the
check-rein with his left and clapped his right hand to the high, round
pommel. There was a moment's pause; he cast a quick glance to the
horse's head; thrust his foot into the huge stirrup, and with a grunt
and a mighty swing was into the saddle. And then the beast gathered
itself together and with an angry squeal leapt from the ground. Half a
dozen times it went up and down, as you have perhaps seen a cat or a
ferret do--with stiff legs and humped back. But Donoghue seemed part of
the heavy, creaking saddle, and after these lurchings and another
half-dozen wheelings the brute calmed. Apache Kid swung himself up to
his horse and we struck on to the stage road in the light of the stars.
And just then there came a clinking of horse's hoofs to our ears and
there, on the road coming up from Camp Kettle, and bound toward Baker
City, was an old, grey-bearded man leading a pack-horse and spluttering
and coughing as he trudged ahead in the dust.
"It's a good night, gentlemen," he said, stopping and eyeing
us--Donoghue across the road, in the lead, and already a few paces up
the hillside, Apache Kid with the led horse, I blocking his passage way.
"Yes; it's a fair night," said Apache Kid, civilly enough, but I thought
him vexed at this encounter.
"It's a cough I take at times," said the old man, wheezing again. "I 'm
getting up in years. Yes, you 're better to camp out in the hills
instead of going into Camp Kettle to-night. I 've seen some camps in my
day--I 'm gettin' an old man. No; I could n't stop in that place
to-night."
His pack-horse stood meekly behind him, laden up with blankets, pans,
picks, and the inevitable Winchester.
"Yes, siree, you 're better in the hills, a fine starry night o' summer,
instead of down there. It's a cough I have," he wheezed. "I 'm gettin'
an old man. Any startling news to relate?"
"Nothing startling," said Apache Kid.
"What you think o' the rush to Spokane way? Anything in it, think you?"
said the old man in his slow, weary voice.
"O, I think----" began Apache Kid, but the old man seemed to forget he
had put a question.
"What you think o' this part o' the country?" he asked, and then
abruptly, without evidently desiring an answer: "Well, well, I 'll give
you good night. I 'll keep goin' on, till I get a good camp place--maybe
all night I don't like Camp Kettle to-night," and grumbling something
about being an old man now, he plodded on, his pack-horse waking up at
the jerk on the rein and following behind.
"Aye," sighed Apache Kid to me, "no wonder they say 'as crazy as a
prospector.' It's the hills that do it. The hills and the loneliness
and all that," he said with a wave of his hand in the starshine. Then
suddenly he spurred forward his horse upon Donoghue and in a low,
vehement voice: "Stop that, Donoghue!" he said. "What on earth are you
wanting to do?"
For Donoghue was glaring after the weary old prospector and dragging his
Winchester from the sling at his saddle. He managed to splutter out the
word "blab" as he pointed after the man and then pulled again at the
Winchester which he found difficult to get free. But Apache Kid smote
Donoghue's horse upon the flank and pressed him forward and so we left
the road and began breasting the hill with the stars, brilliant and
seeming larger to me than ever they seemed seen through the atmosphere
of the old country, shining down on us out of a cloudless sky.
Perhaps it had been better had Donoghue got his rifle free, callous
though it may seem to say so. For other lives might have been spared
and these mountains, into the foothills of which we now plunged, have
not been assoiled with the blood of many had that one solitary old
prospector ceased his weary seekings and his journeyings there, as
Donoghue intended.
*CHAPTER X*
_*In the Enemy's Camp*_
In a little fold of the hills we made our camp, somewhere about two in
the morning, I should think.
Donoghue rolled off his horse at a word from Apache Kid, and stood
yawning and grunting, but Apache Kid had his partner's blankets undone
in a twinkling and bade him lie down and go to sleep. Then he hobbled
the horses and, sitting down on his own blanket-roll, which he had not
undone:
"Could you eat anything?" said he.
"Eat!" I ejaculated.
"Well, sleep, then?" he said.
"Aye, I could sleep," said I. "I should like to sleep never to awaken."
"As bad as that?" said he.
"Look here," said I. "I 've just been thinking that I----" and I
stopped.
Something was creeping stealthily along the ridge of the cup in which we
sat, and the horses were all snorting, drowning the sound of Donoghue's
deep breathing.
"It's only a coyote," said Apache Kid, looking up in the direction of my
gaze. "You look tired, my boy," he added in a kindlier voice. "Well,
if these fellows are going to sit round us, I suppose I 'd better make a
fire; but I did n't want to. We 'll make a small one. You know what
the Indians say: 'Indian make small fire and lie close; white man make
big fire and lie heap way off. White man dam fool!' And there is some
sense in it. We don't want to light a beacon to-night, anyway."
So saying, he rose and cried "Shoo!" to the skulking brutes that went
round and round our hollow, showing lean and long against the sky.
I watched him going dim and shadowy along the hill-front, where
contorted bushes waved their arms now and then in the night wind. He
took a small axe with him, from the pouch of his saddle, and I heard the
clear "ping" of it now and then after he himself was one with the
bushes. And there I sat with my weary thoughts beside the snoring man
and the horses huddling close behind me, as though for my company, and
the prowl, prowl of the coyotes round and round me. Then suddenly these
latter scattered again and Apache Kid returned, like a walking tree
beside the pale sky, and made up a fire and besought me to lie down,
which I had no sooner done than I fell asleep, for I was very weary.
Now and then I woke and heard far-off cries,--of wildcats, I
suppose,--and saw the stars twinkling in the heavens and the little
parcel of fire flickering at my feet; but the glow of Apache Kid's
cigarette reassured me each time, and though once I thought of asking
him if he himself did not want to sleep, so heavy with sleep was I that
I sank again into oblivion ere the thought was fairly formed.
So it was morning at last, when I came again broad awake, and Apache Kid
was sitting over the fire with the frying-pan in hand. Indeed, the
first thing I saw on waking was the flip he gave to the pan that sent
the pancake--or flapjack, as it is called--twirling in the air. And as
he caught it neatly on the undone side and put the pan again on the
blaze (that the morning sunlight made a feeble yellow) I gathered that
he was catechising Donoghue, who sat opposite him staring at him very
hard across the fire.
"No," Larry was saying, "I got a horse all right, and gave out at the
stable that I was going to the Placer Camp, and struck south right
enough and went into the bit where we were to meet and sat there waiting
you, and not a soul came nigh hand all the derned time."
"How do you know, when you acknowledge you were as drunk as drunk?"
"How do I know?" said Donoghue. "Why, drunk or sober, I never lose
anything more than my speech."
"True," said Apache. "But you 're a disgusting sight when you are
trying to talk and----"
"Well, well; let that drop," said Donoghue. "I was sober enough to let
the wind out of that fellow that held up you two."
"Thanks to you," said Apache Kid. "Which reminds me that there may be
others on the track of us; though how these fellows followed so quick
I----"
"O, pshaw!" said Donoghue. "You must have come away careless from Baker
City. I saw the stage comin' in from where I was layin', and I saw them
two fellows comin' up half an hour after."
"O!" said Apache Kid, paying no heed to the charge of a careless
departure. "And anybody else suspicious-looking?"
Donoghue shook his head. But the meal was now ready, and I do not know
when I enjoyed a meal as I did that flapjack and the bacon and the big
canful of tea made with water from a creek half a mile along the hill,
as Apache Kid told me, so that I knew he had been busy before I awoke.
I felt a little easier at the heart now than on the night before, and
less inclined to renounce my agreement and return. But suddenly, as we
were saddling up again, the thought of those dead men came into my head;
and though of a certainty they had been evil men, yet the thought that
these two with me had taken human lives gave me a "grew," as the Scots
say.