"Put down your rifle then, and let us talk it over."
"Come, now, that's better," said Canlan, cheerily; but I noticed that a
nerve in his left cheek kept twitching oddly as he spoke, and his head
gave constant nervous jerks left and right, like a man shaking flies
away from him, and he sniffed constantly, and I think was quite unaware
that he did so. But I did not wonder at his nervousness after such a
heinous deed as he had performed that evening.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
_*The Lost Cabin is Found*_
"Come, come," said Canlan, suddenly, with an access of the facial
twitching and another sudden jerking of his head. "If them 's your
blankets, pack 'em up and let's git out o' this, back to my camp the
other side of the lake."
I thought it as well to obey him, for if either of these men yet lived
and should by any ill fortune emit as much as a moan, I knew that Canlan
would make a speedy end then. If they lived, the best I could do for
them was to leave them.
And yet there was another thing that I might do--snatch up one of the
revolvers and straightway mete out justice--no less--upon this murderer.
But he was on the alert and shoved his Winchester against my neck as I
stooped, tying my blanket-roll, with my eyes surreptitiously measuring
the distance to the nearest weapon.
"See here," he said, "I can't be runnin' chances with you. I 've let
you off already, but I can't be givin' you chances to kill me now.
Funny thing it would be for me to let you off for having saved my life
once, and then you turn round and plug me now. Eh? That would be a skin
kind of a game to play on a man. If that's your gun layin' there with
the belt, you can buckle on the belt but keep your hands off the gun, or
I gets tired o' my kindness. See?"
He snarled the last word at me, and over my shoulder I saw the leer on
his grey face as he spoke. So I packed my blankets without more ado and
buckled on my belt, with the revolver in its holster hanging from it,
and at Canlan's suggestion took also a bag of flour with me.
"I guess there ain't no call to see what them two has in their pockets
by way of dough,"[#] said he. "We don't have no need for feelin' in dead
men's pockets now--you and me," and he winked and laughed a dry,
crackling, nervous laugh, and stooped to lift a torch from our fire.
[#] Money.
With this raised in his hand he whirled about on me and said: "Now
remember, I trusts you," and led off at a brisk pace from the trodden
circle of the camp-fire. He had the tail of his eye on me, and I
followed at once.
We skirted the lake, keeping under the trees, the torch sending the
twisted shadows flying before us and bringing them up behind; and just
at the bend of the lake I looked back at that camp, and it brought to my
mind the similar, or almost similar, scene I had witnessed in the place
of smouldering stumps behind Camp Kettle.
We plodded round the north end of this little lake, and then a horse
whinnied in the gloom, and, "Here we are," cried Canlan, and stooping,
he thrust the torch into the embers of the fire he had evidently had
there and trodden out suddenly. He kicked it together again, and soon
the flames were leaping up vigorously. Then he turned and looked on me.
"Well," said he, "you and your friends must ha' travelled pretty quick.
Clever lads! Clever lads! Did you know that you was goin' to try and
spoil Mike Canlan's game that day I gave you good-bye at Baker City?"
"Not I," I replied. "I did not know then that you knew the secret."
"Ah well, I did! Clever lad Apache thought himself, I guess, slinkin'
away down to Camp Kettle and cuttin' in that ways. Well, I ain't
surprised he took that way. He knows it well. If all stories is true,
he 's played hide and seek in that same valley more nor once with
gentlemen that had some desire for to settle accounts with him."
He blinked on me, and then sniffed twice, and suddenly pursed his lips
and said:
"But that ain't here nor there. Are you on to take my offer o' half
shares in this?"
The whole man was still loathsome to me, and I cried out:
"No, no! And would to Heaven I had never heard of this horrible and
accursed quest."
"Well," drawled Canlan, "I 'm gettin' some tired o' havin' no sleep
nights for sittin' listenin' for fellers follerin' me up. Not that they
'd kill me in my sleep. I guess I 'm too precious like for that. I 've
been keepin' myself up on tanglefoot all the way in, but I did n't bring
nigh enough for them mountains, and it's give out. It's give out this
last day and a night, and by jiminy, I 'm gettin' them again. I feel
'em comin' on. It ain't good for a man like me wantin' my tonic. Say,"
and his face twitched again, "I 'm jest holdin' myself together now by
fair devil's desperation; when I get to the end o' this journey I 'm
gettin' some scared my brain-pan will jest----" he stopped abruptly and
began on a fresh track: "Well, it's natural, I guess, for you to feel
bad to-night, you bein' partners o' them fellers so recent. But you'll
be better come morning. Say, if I lay down and sleep you won't shoot me
sleepin', eh?"
"I won't do that," said I.
"That's a bargain, then," he cried, and before I could say another word
he threw himself down beside the fire.
He drew his hand over his brow and showed me it wet.
"That's for wantin' the liquor," he said. "A man what don't know the
crave can't understand it. I know what I need though. Sleep,--that's
what I need; and I 'm jest goin' to force myself to sleep."
I made no reply, but looked on him as he lay, and perceived that his
ghastly face was all clammy in the fire-sheen as he reclined in this
attempt to steady his unstrung nerves. For me, I sat on, scarcely
heeding the noises of the midnight forest. I heard a mud-turtle ever
and again, with that peculiar sound as of a pump being worked. That was
a sound new to me then, but the other cries--of the wildcats and
wolves--I heeded little.
Once or twice I thought of taking a brand from the fire to light me
round to the camp across the lake, that I might discover whether,
indeed, both my friends were dead. But, as I turned over this thought
of return in my mind, Canlan brought down his arms again from above his
head where they had lain relaxed, and, opening his eyes, rolled on his
side and looked up at me.
"Don't you do it," he said.
"Do what?" I inquired.
"What you was thinkin' of," he replied.
"And what was that?"
"You know," he said, thickly and grimly, "and I know. Two men alone in
the mountains can't ever hide their thoughts from each other. Mind you
that!"
"What was I thinking of doing, then?" I asked.
"That's all right," he said. "You can't bluff me."
"Well, what then?" I cried, irritated.
He sat up.
"You was thinkin' of goin' right off, right now. No, it wasn't to get in
ahead of me at the Cabin Mine. I 'm beginnin' to guess that Apache Kid
did n't let you know so much as that. But you was just feelin' so sick
and sorry like that you thought o' gettin' up quiet and takin' my hoss
there and----"
He was watching my face as he spoke, peering up at me and sniffing.
With a kick he got the fire into a blaze, but without taking his eyes
from me. Then, "No, you was n't thinkin' that, either," he said, in a
voice as of disappointment that his power of mind-reading seemed at
fault.
"Derned if I dew know what you was thinkin'," he acknowledged. "Oh, you
're deeper than most," he went on, "but I 'll get to know you yet. Yes,
siree; I 'll see right through you yet."
He lay down after this vehement talk, as though exhausted, wiping the
sweat from his brow where it gleamed in the little furrows of leathery
skin. He was not a pretty man, I assure you.
A feeling as of pride came over me to think that this evil man was
willing to take my word that I would not meddle him in his sleep, as I
saw him close his eyes once more,--this time really asleep, I think.
But to attempt to return to Apache Kid's camp I now was assured in my
mind would be a folly. At a merest movement of mine Canlan might
awaken, and if he suspected that I entertained a hope of at least one of
my late companions being alive, he might himself be shaken in his belief
in the deadly accuracy of his aim.
I pictured him waking to find me stealing away to Apache's camp and
stealthily following me up. I even pictured our arrival at the further
shore--the still glowing fire, both my companions sitting up bleeding
and dazed and trying to tend each other, Canlan marching up to them
while they were still in that helpless predicament and blowing their
brains from his Winchester's mouth. So I sat still where I was and
eventually dozed a little myself, till morning came to the tree-tops and
slipped down into the valley and glowed down from the sky, and then
Canlan awoke fairly and stretched himself and yawned a deal and moaned,
"God, God, God!"--three times.
And I thought to myself that this reptile of a man might well cry on God
on waking that morning.
Neither he nor I, each for our own reasons, ate any breakfast. My
belongings I allowed him to pack on his horse with his own, so that I
might not be burdened with them, the chance of a tussle with Canlan
being still in my mind. Then, after we had extinguished the fire, a
thought came to me. It was when I saw that he was going to strike
directly uphill through the forest that I scented an excuse to get back
to my comrades. True, my hope that they lived was now pretty nigh at
ebb, for I argued to myself that if life was in them, they would already
have managed to follow us. Aye! I believed that either of them,
supposing even that he could not stand, would have _crawled_ along our
trail at the first light of day, bent upon vengeance; for I had learnt
to know them both as desperate men--though to one of them, despite what
I knew of his life, I had grown exceedingly attached.
"I 'll go back to our old camp," said I, "and bring along an axe if you
are going right up that way. We may need it to clear a way for the
horse."
He wheeled about.
"Say!" he said. "What are you so struck on goin' back to your camp for.
Guess I 'll come with you and see jest what you want."
He looked me so keenly in the eye that I said at once, knowing that to
object to his presence would be the worst attitude possible: "Come,
then," and stepped out; but when he saw that I was not averse to his
company he cried out:
"No, no. I have an axe here that will serve the turn if we need to do
any cutting. But I reckon we won't need to use an axe none. It's up
this here dry watercourse we go, and there won't be much clearin' wanted
here."
It was now broad day, and as I turned to follow Canlan again I gave up
my old friends for dead.
The man's short, broad back and childish legs, and the whole shape of
him, seemed to combine to raise my gorge.
"I would be liker a man," I thought, "if I struck this reptile dead."
And the thought was scarce come into my mind and must, I think, have
been glittering in my eyes, when he flashed around on me his colourless
face, and said he:
"Remember, I trust my life to you. I take it that you 've agreed to my
offer of last night to go half shares on this. God knows you 'll have
to look after me by nightfall, this blessed day--unless there 's maybe a
tot o' drink in that cabin."
At the thought he absolutely screamed:
"A tot o' drink! A tot o' drink!" and away he went with a sign to me to
follow, scrambling up the watercourse before his horse, which followed
with plodding hoofs, head rising and falling doggedly, and long tail
swishing left and right. I brought up the rear. And thus we climbed
the greater part of the forenoon, with occasional rests to regain our
wind, till at last we came out on the bald, shorn, last crest of the
mountain.
Canlan marched the pony side on to the hill to breathe; and he himself,
blowing the breath from him in gusts and sniffing a deal, pointed to the
long, black hill-top stretching above us.
"A mountain o' mud," he said. "That's it right enough. Some folks
thinks that everything that prospectors says they come across in the
mountains is jest their demented imaginatings like; but I seen mountains
o' mud before. There 's a terror of a one in the Crow's Nest Pass, away
up the east Kootenai; and there's one in Colorado down to the Warm
Springs country. You can feel it quiver under you when you walk on
it--all same jelly. See--you see that black crest there? That's all
mud. This here, where we are, is good enough earth though, all right,
with rock into it. It's here that we turn now. Let me see----"
He took some fresh bearings, looking to the line of hills to the
south-east. I thought I could pick out the notch at the summit, over
there, through which Apache Kid, Donoghue, and I had come; and then he
led off again--along the hill this time, his head jerking terribly, and
his whole body indeed, so that now and again he leapt up in little
hopping steps like one afflicted with St. Vitus' dance.
Up a rib of the mountain, as it might be called, he marched, I now
walking level with him; for I must confess I was excited.
And then I saw at last what I had journeyed so painfully and paid so
cruelly to see,--a little "shack," or cabin, of untrimmed logs of the
colour of the earth in which it stood, there, just a stone's cast from
us, between the rib on which we stood and the next rib that gave a
sweeping contour to the hill and then broke off short, so that the
mountain at that place went down in a sharp slope, climbed upon lower
down by insignificant, scrubby trees. But there--there was the cabin,
sure enough. There was our journey's end.
Canlan turned his ashen face to me, and his yellow eyeballs glittered.
"It looks as we were first," he said, his voice going up at the end into
a wavering cry and his lips twitching convulsively.
*CHAPTER XIX*
_*Canlan Hears Voices*_
You should have seen the way in which Canlan approached that solitary,
deserted cabin. One might have thought, to see him, that he fully
expected to find it occupied.
"Hullo, the shack," he cried, leading his horse down from the rocky rib
on which we had paused to view the goal of our journey. I noticed how
the horse disapproved of this descent; standing with firm legs it
clearly objected to Canlan's leading. The reins were over its head, and
Canlan was a little way down the rib hauling on them, half-turned and
cursing it vehemently. It could not have been the slope that troubled
the animal, for that was trifling; but there it stood, dumbly
rebellious, its neck stretched, but budge a foot it would not.
At last it consented to descend, but very gingerly feeling every step
with doubtful forefeet, and craned neck still straining against Canlan.
Even when he succeeded in coaxing and commanding it to the descent it
seemed very doubtful about going out on the hollow toward the shack, and
reminded me, in the way it walked there, of a hen as you may see one
coming out of a barn when the rain takes off.
"What in thunder's wrong with you?" cried Canlan. "Come along, will
you? Looks as if there was somebody, sure thing, in the shack. Hullo,
the shack! Hullo, the cabin!" he hailed again.
"----the shack! Hullo, the cabin!" cried out the rib beyond, in an
echo.
So Canlan advanced on the cabin, his rifle loose on his arm, right up to
the door on which he knocked, and from the sound of the knocking I
declare I had an idea that the place was tenanted.
He knocked again.
"Sounds as if there was somebody in here," he said, in a low, thick
whisper, so that I thought he was afraid.
He knocked again, rat-tat-tat, and sniffed twice, and piped up in his
wheezy voice: "Good day, sir; here's two pilgrims come for shelter."
It was at his third rap, louder, more forcible on the door, which was a
very rough affair, being three tree-stems cleft down the centre and
bound together with cross-pieces, as I surmised, on the inside,--just at
the last dull knock of his knuckles that the door fell bodily inward,
and a great flutter of dust arose inside the dark cabin.
"Anyone there?" he asked, and then stepped boldly in.
"Nobody here," he said, bringing down his rifle with a clatter. "One
has to be careful approaching lonesome cabins far away from a settlement
at all times."
Then suddenly he turned a puzzled face on me.
"Queer that, eh?"
"What?"
"Why, that there door. Propped up from the inside. If there was any
kind of a smell here apart from jest the or'nary smell of a log shanty,
I 'd be opining that that there number three o' this here _push_ that
worked the mine---- Say!--" he broke off, "where in thunder is the
prospect itself?"
And out he went of the mirk of the cabin, in a perfect twitter of
nerves, and away across to the spur of which I told you.
There I saw him from the door (by which the pack-horse stood quiet now,
the reins trailing) kick his foot several times in the earth. Then he
turned to see if I observed him, and flicking off his hat waved it round
his head and came posting back.
"There 's half a dozen logs flung across the shaft they sunk," said he,
"and they're covered over with dirt, to hide it like. Let's get in
first and see what's what inside."
There was no flooring to the cabin and at one end was a charred place on
the ground. Canlan looked up at the low roof there and, stretching up
his hands, groped a little and then removed a sort of hatch in the roof.
"This here," said he, "hes bin made fast from the inside too--jest like
the door. Look in them bunks. Three bunks and nothin' but blankets.
And over the floor the blankets is layin' too, hauled about."
The light from the hatch above was now streaming in.
"Them blankets is all chawed up," he said.
"Heavens!" I gasped. "Were they driven to that?"
"What devils me," he said, not replying to my remark but looking round
the place with a kind of anxiety visible on his forehead, "is this here
fixin' up from the inside. There's blankets, picks, shovels, all the
outfit, and there's the windlass and tackle for the shaft-head. No," he
said, recollecting my remark, "them blankets was n't chawed up by them.
Rats has been in here--and thick. See all the sign o' them there?"
He pointed to the floor, but it was then that I observed, in a corner,
after the fashion of a three-cornered cupboard, a rough shelving that
had been made there. Every shelf, I saw, was heaped up with
something,--but what? I stepped nearer and scrutinised.
"Look at all the bones here," I said.
Canlan was at my side on the very words.
"That's him!" he said, in a gasp of relief. "That's him. That's number
three. That's him that stuck up the door and the smoke hole."