I thought perhaps that it was half excitement that caused the laugh. It
was not that exactly, however. It was something else.
"As you remarked," said he to the sheriff, "it's a pity about that
mud-slide," and he swung his revolver to and fro in a limp hand.
"Don't drop that gun o' yours," said the sheriff in anxiety. "Don't you
give the show plumb away. By Jimminy! they are meditatin' another. Say!
Guess I 'll palaver again some."
He leaped to his feet and waved the palm of his hand toward the four and
then set it to the side of his mouth like a speaking-trumpet.
"I tell yous," he cried, "I 'm not a bloody man. I'm ag'in blood.
That's why I give you this last reminder that you 're kickin' ag'in the
law and I advise you to take warnin' from what you got already. If I
was n't ag'in blood, I would n't talk at all."
Apache Kid tittered again.
"You need n't just tell them it's your own blood you are thinking of,
Sheriff."
"No!" said the sheriff, with a queer, flat look about his face--I don't
know how else to describe it--"I 've said enough, I reckon. If I seem
anxious to spare 'em and warn 'em off some more, they might be liable to
tumble to it that we 've put up our last fight, eh?" And he gave a
grim, mirthless laugh.
The four seemed uncertain. Then one of them looked down-hill, the other
three followed his gaze, and away they flew above us and round in a
circle, not firing now, to where their wounded comrade lay by the rock,
and after capturing his horse, one of them, alighting, helped him to the
saddle. It is a wonder to me that they did not surmise that our
ammunition was done, for they came close enough to carry away the others
who had fallen. But they themselves did not fire again. They seemed in
haste to be gone, and with another glance round and shaking their fists
backwards as they rode, they departed athwart the slope and broke into a
jogging lope down Baker shoulder.
Apache Kid had moved away a trifle from the rest of us as we watched
this departure, and now he sat grinning at the sheriff who was mopping
his brow and head.
"Well, Sheriff," he said. "I hope this convinces you of my innocence."
"What?" asked the sheriff, a little pucker at the eyes.
Apache handed him back the revolver that he had received at the
beginning of the fight.
"That!" said he.
The sheriff looked at the chambers which Apache Kid's finger indicated
with dignified triumph.
"Two shells that you did n't fire!" said the sheriff. "What does that
show?"
"That I had you held up if I had liked--you and your Indian--and I
passed the hand, so to speak. My friend and I might leave you now if we
so desired. There are other ways through the mountains besides following
these gentlemen. We could do pretty well, he and I, I think."
The sheriff smiled grimly.
"This here Winchester that's pointin' at your belly has one shell in
yet," said he. "It come into my haid that maybe----" and he stopped and
then in a voice that seemed to belie a good deal of what I had already
taken to be his nature, a voice full of beseeching, he said: "Say,
Apache, I got to apologise to you for keepin' up this yere shell. You
're a deep man, sir, but I guess you are innocent, right enough, o'
wipin' out Pinkerton. Here comes Slim and the waggon."
Apache looked with admiration on the sheriff.
"Diamond cut diamond," he said, and laughed; and then said he: "And have
I to apologise for keeping my two shells?"
"No, sir!" cried the sheriff. "You kept them to show me you was square.
I kept my last one because I did n't trust you. I guess I do now."
"We begin to understand each other," said Apache.
"I don't know about understand," said the sheriff. "But I sure am
getting a higher opinion of you than I had before."
*CHAPTER XXIV*
_*For Fear of Judge Lynch*_
The long, dragging scream of wheels came to our ears, putting an end to
this mutual admiration; and then there came out of the cool of the woods
below, where the honeysuckle showed, into the blaze of the hillside,
with its grey-blue granite blocks and their blue shadows, a large
Bain-waggon drawn by two horses.
On either side of it two men rode on dark horses. The sheriff signed to
the cortege to stop, and by the time that we had descended to this party
the waggon was turned about.
"Well," said the sheriff to Slim who was driving the team, his horse
hitched behind, "you got it from him. Was he kind o' slow about lendin'
it?"
"Nosiree," said Slim. "He was settin' on a dump near the cable-house
when I got to the mine, settin' shying crusts o' punk at the
chipmunks--they 've a pow'ful lot of them around the Molly Magee--and he
seemed kind o' astonished to see me. 'Up to business?' he says, 'up to
business? You ain't goin' to take him away from me?' he says, meanin',
of course, the violinist----"
Apache said to me at that: "Remind me to tell you what he means--about
the violinist."
"So I jest tells him no," continued Slim, "and asked him the loan o' one
of his waggons, and he says, 'What for?' And I takes him by the lapel
o' his coat an' says, 'Can you keep a secret?' and he says then, 'Aha,'
he says, 'I know what it is. You got Apache Kid on the hill there and
you want the waggon to get him through the city for fear o' any of the
boys tryin' to get a shot at him.' Says I: 'Who told you? Guess
again.' And he says he reckoned he would lend me the waggon, and right
pleased" (Slim shot a meaning look at Apache Kid), "but as for keepin'
quiet, that was beyond him, he said."
"Dern!" said the sheriff. "So he 'll be telling the Magee boys and
havin' 'em comin' huntin' after us, like enough, for our prisoner, if
feelin' is high about this."
Slim laid a finger to his nose. "Nosiree," said he. "I jest told him
if he could n't keep holt o' our secret for three hours, and give us a
start, that first thing he knew we'd come along and be liftin' his
violinist, some fine day, along with a nice French policeman or sheriff,
or what they call 'em there--_grand army_ or something--all the way from
Paris."
The sheriff gloated on this.
"That would tighten him up some," said he.
"It did," replied Slim, and would have continued to pat himself on the
back for his diplomacy, I believe, but the sheriff turned abruptly to
Apache Kid and me and ordered us with a new sharpness, because of the
newcomers, I suppose, to get into the waggon; and soon we were going
briskly down-hill, the four mounted men riding two by two on either
side, the sheriff loping along by the team's side and my pack-horse
trotting behind, with Slim's mount in charge of the Indian.
We gathered from the remarks of the sheriff that these four men had been
camped down-hill a little way for three days, out of sight of the waggon
track, awaiting our coming. Slim had evidently, after securing the
waggon, picked them up.
"That violinist," said Apache Kid to me, "that Slim mentioned to the
Molly Magee boss by way of a threat, is rather a notable figure here.
He was leader of an orchestra in Paris, embezzled money, bolted out here
and up at the Molly Magee gets his three and a half dollars a day of
miner's wages and keeps his hands as soft as a child's. He could n't
tap a drill on the head two consecutive times to save his life."
"What do they keep him for, then?" I asked. "And why do they pay him?"
though really I was not much interested in violinists at the time and
wondered how Apache Kid could talk at all or do else than long for
getting well out of this grievous pass that he was in. And, from his
own lips, I knew he thought his condition serious.
"Well," said he, "the reason why gives you an idea of how very stiff a
miner's lot is in some places. The Molly Magee mine is a wet mine, very
wet, and it lies in a sort of notch on the hill where the wind is always
cold. Crossing from the mine to the bunkhouse men have been known to
take a pain in the back between the shoulder-blades, bend forward, and
remark on the acuteness of it and be dead in three hours--of pneumonia.
It's a wet mine and a cold hill. This violinist is just a Godsend to
the owners. Instead of having to be content with whoever they can get to
work the mine for them they have the pick of the miners of the
territory; even most of the _muckers_ in the mine are really
full-fledged miners, but are yet content to take muckers' wages--and all
because of this violinist. He plays to them, you see, and his fame has
gone far and wide over the territory. The Molly Magee, bad mine though
she is, with a store of coffins always kept there, never lacks for
miners. That's what they keep our violinist for."
But we were jolting well down-hill now and soon caught glimpses of Baker
City between the trees.
"I reckon you better lie down in the bottom of that there waggon," said
the sheriff, looking round, his left hand resting on his horse's
quarters. "When they see you it might rouse them."
"Sir!" said Apache (it was the first word he had spoken, apart from his
talk with me, since the guard joined us), "I 'm innocent of this charge,
and I want to live to disprove it, not for my own honour alone. For many
reasons, for many reasons I want to disprove it. But I 'm damned if I
grovel in the bottom of a waggon for any hobo in Baker City!"
The sheriff said not a word in reply, just nodded his head as though to
say, "So be it, then," stayed his horse till the waggon came abreast,
leant from his saddle and spoke a word to Slim, who suddenly emitted a
yell that caused the horses to leap forward.
The guard on either side had their Winchesters with the butts on their
right thighs--and so we went flying into Baker City, the sheriff again
spurring ahead; so we whirled along, with a glimpse of the Laughlin
House, dashed down that street, suddenly attracting the attention of
those who stayed there, and they, grasping the situation after a
moment's hesitation, came pounding down on the wooden sidewalks after
us.
So we swept into Baker Street, where a great cry got up, and men rose on
the one-storey-up verandahs of the hotels and craned out to look on us;
and the throng ran on the sidewalks on either side.
Apache Kid had a sneer beginning on his lips, but that changed and his
brows knitted as a man who, on toting up a sum, finds the result other
than he expected. For those, who saw our arrival waved their hats in
air and cheered our passage; and it was with a deal of wonder and
astonishment that I saw the look of admiration on the brown faces that
showed through the dust we raised. To me it looked as though, had these
men cared to combine to stop our progress, it would not have been to
hale Apache Kid before Judge Lynch, but rather to have taken the horses
from the waggon, as you see students do with the carriage of some man
who is their momentary hero, and drag us in triumph through the city.
The sheriff had expected to find the city enraged at us, anxious to do
"justice" in a summary fashion.
This cheering must have puzzled him. It certainly puzzled us.
*CHAPTER XXV*
_*The Making of a Public Hero*_
An old, bowed greybeard, with an expressionless, weather-beaten mask of
a face, closed the gate into the "lock-up" after us as we swept into the
square. I remember the jar with which that massive gate closed, but
somehow it did not affect me as I thought it should have done. Perhaps
the reason for this absence of awe was due to the fact that the murmur
of voices without, as of a concourse gathering there, was not a
belligerent murmur.
"If Judge Lynch goes to work like this," said I to myself, "he has a
mighty cheerful way of carrying out his justice on those who offend
him."
But I saw that the sheriff and Slim and the guard also were somewhat "at
sea," at a loss to account for the manner of our reception. The sheriff
flung off his horse and marched into the gaol building, I suppose to see
that the entrance into the office was closed. We remained still in the
waggon.
Slim chewed meditatively and spat in the sand of the patio, or
square--familiarity I suppose breeding contempt--and to the old
greybeard, who had closed the gate on our entrance, and now stood by the
waggon clapping the quick-breathing horses, he said: "Well, Colonel, you
know how them turbulent populace acts. You hev seen some turbulent
populaces in your time, Colonel. What does this yere sound of levity
pertend?"
"You mought think from the sound they was electin' a new mayor, eh?"
said the old man addressed as colonel. "B'ain't a hangin', for sure,"
and at these words I impulsively laid my hand on Apache Kid's forearm
and pressed it; but the colonel at the same moment tapped Apache Kid on
the small of the back, and he turned round to find that worthy holding
up a leathery hand and saying, "Shake."
"With pleasure," said Apache Kid. "It is an honour to me to shake hands
with you, Colonel."
The old man seemed to enjoy being addressed in this flattering fashion,
which doubtless Apache Kid knew; for after the hand-shaking, when the
colonel waddled away to the horses' heads to begin unhitching, a task in
which Slim promptly assisted (I think more to ask questions, however,
rather than to share the work), Apache Kid remarked to me:
"He 's a great character, that; he goes out about town now with the
chain-gang; you must have seen him trotting behind them, with his head
bowed, squinting up at his flock from the corners of his eyes, his rifle
in hand. That's the job he gets in the evening of his days; but if any
man could make your hair curl, as the expression is, that old man could
do it with his yarns about the days when everything west of the
Mississippi was the Great American Desert. He seems to be
congratulating me on something. Whether he thinks I 'm one of the
baddest bad men he 's ever seen, or whether----"
It was then that the sheriff came slowly down the three steps into the
square.
"You two gentlemen," said he, "might be good enough to step this way.
And say, Slim! That there pack-horse is jest to be left standing,
meanwhile. I reckon the property on its back ain't come under the
inspection of the law yet--quite."
I could have cried out with joy; not for myself, for the sheriff had led
me to believe all the way that I had got mixed up with this "trouble" on
the less objectionable side,--the right side. It was for Apache Kid
that my heart gladdened. Yet he, to all appearance, was as little
affected by this ray of hope as he had been by the expectation of
"stretching hemp."
He swung his leg leisurely over on to the tire of the wheel, stepped
daintily on to the hub, and leaped to the ground.
"At your service, Sheriff," said he, and I followed him.
I noticed that the sheriff had again assumed his ponderous frown, a
frown that I was beginning to consider a meaningless thing,--a sort of
mere badge of office. He led us into a white-painted room, where a
young lady habited plainly in black sat, with bent and sidewise head.
And we were no sooner into the room, hats in hand, than the door closed
behind us and we heard the sheriff's ponderous tread depart with great
emphasis down an echoing corridor.
The young lady, as you have surmised, was Mr. Pinkerton's daughter; and
there was a wan smile of welcome on her saddened face as she looked up
to us.
We stood like shamed, heart-broken culprits before her; and I know that
my heart bled for her.
She was so changed from the last time I had seen her. The innocent
expression of her face, the openness and lack of all pose, were still
evident; but these things served to make her lonely position the more
sad to think of. She was like a stricken deer; and her great eyes
looked upon us, craving, even before she spoke her yearning, some word
of her father.
"Tell me," she said. "Charlie has told me--in his way. Oh! It is a
hard, bitter story, as it comes from him."
"To my mind," said Apache Kid, in a soft voice, "it is at once one of
the saddest stories and one of which the daughter cannot think without a
greater honouring of her father."
Her hungering eyes looked squarely on him, but she spoke not a word.
"To me," he said, "his passing must be ever remembered with very
poignant grief; and to my friend"--and he inclined his head to me--"it
must be the same."
I thought she was on the brink of tears and breaking down, and so, I
think, did he; for as I looked away sad (and ashamed, in a way), he
said: "God knows how I feel this!"
I think the interjection of this personal cry helped her to be strong to
hear She tossed the tears from her eyes bravely, and he went on:
"When I think that he died through simple disinterested kindness, and
that that kindness, that was his undoing, was done for me--and my
friends," he said in a lower tone, "then, though it makes me but the
more sorrowful, I feel that"--he spoke the rest more quickly--"he died a
death such as any man might wish to die. It was a noble death, and he
was the finest man----"
"Oh!" she cried, "but I--I--it was I who bade him follow you."
Apache Kid's eyes were staring on the floor; and in the agony of my
heart, whether well or ill advised I do not know, I said:
"Your name was the last on his lips."
Her face craved all that could be told; and I told her all now, she
growing calmer, with bitten lips, as I, feeling for her grief, found the
more pain.
Then Apache Kid spoke, and I found a tone in his voice,--I, who had come
to know him, being cast beside him in the mountain solitudes,--that made
me think he spoke what he did, not because he really did believe it, but
because he thought it fit to say.
"It may seem strange," said he, "to hear it from my lips, as though I
desired to lighten my own regret, but I think our days are all ordained
for us; and when those we love have been ordained to unselfishness, and
to gain the crown of unselfishness, which is ever a crown of thorns, we
can be but thankful--though at the moment we dare not say this to
ourselves."
He looked dumbly at me, pleadingly, I thought. I had an idea that his
eyes besought something of me--but I knew not what; and then he turned
to her and took her hand ever so fearfully, and said:
"You will remember that we have a charge from him, as my friend has told
you; and indeed, it was not necessary that the charge should have been
laid on us." He dropped her hand, and looking at me, said: "I believe
we both would have considered it a privilege to in some slight way----"
he seemed to feel that he was upon the wrong track, and she said:
"Oh! That is nothing. Now that I have heard it all from you it is'
not--not so cruel as Charlie's account. I think I must go now, and I
have to thank you for being so truthful with me and telling me it all so
plainly."
She turned her face aside again and we perceived that she would be
alone. So we passed from the room very quietly and saw the sheriff at
the end of the corridor beckoning us, and went toward him.
"She hes told you, I guess," said he, "that the case is off."
Apache shook his head.
"Pshaw!" said the sheriff. "What she want with you?"
"To hear how Mr. Pinkerton died."
"But she knew."
"Yes," said Apache Kid, "as a savage saw it."
The sheriff puckered his heavy mouth and raised his eyes.
"Sure!" said he. "That's what. Pretty coarse, I guess. You would kind
o' put the limelight on the scene."
"Sir, sir!" said Apache Kid. "We have just come from her."
"I beg your pardon, gen'lemen," he said. "I understand what you mean; I
know--women and music, and especially them songs about Mother, and the
old farm, and such, jest makes me _feel_ too, at times. I understand,
boys, and I don't mock you none. And that jest makes me think it might
be sort of kind in you if you was goin' out and gettin' them cheerin'
boys out there some ways off, lest she hears them cheerin' an' it kind
o' jars on her."
"Then I am free?"
"Yap; that's what," said the sheriff. "She rode up here with that
Indian trailer feller when the news spread. The colonel tells me that
it was a fellow, Pious Pete, hetched the story out. It was two
strangers to me came to inform me about the killing of Pinkerton--said
they saw you do it from out a bush where they was camped, and would have
gone for you but they had gone busted on cartridges and you was heeled
heavy. They put up a good enough story about them bein' comin' back
from a prospectin' trip, and had it all down fine. So I jest started
right off."
"But how did you know what way to come for us?" asked Apache Kid.
"Oh, well, you see, I had been keepin' track of Canlan. I hed lost
sight o' you, and when I heard you was in the hills away over there, and
also knew how Canlan had gone out over Baker shoulder, I began to guess
where The Lost Cabin lay. It was handier like for me to start trackin'
Canlan than to go away down to Kettle with them fellows and into the
mountains there, and try to get on to your trail where they said you had
buried Mr. P."
Apache Kid nodded.
"So I left them two here to eat at the expense o' the territory till my
return. It was the colonel got onto them fust--recognised 'em for old
friends of a right celebrated danger to civilisation which his name was
Farrell."
"Ah!" said Apache Kid.
"So I hear now, when I comes back, anyway," said the sheriff. "Then
along comes Miss Pinkerton, and when they see her on the scene, well,
why they reckon on feedin' off this yere territory no more. The colonel
is some annoyed that they did n't wait on and try to hold up their
story. I reckon they either had not figured on Miss P., or else had
surmised she 'd not raise her voice ag'in' your decoratin' a rope. But
I keep you from distractin' them boys out there and they starts cheerin'
ag'in. After you 've kind o' distributed them come back and see me. I
'm kind o' stuck on you, Apache. I guess you 'll make a good enough
citizen yet--maybe you might be in the running yet for sheriff o' Carson
City within the next few years."
But a renewed outbreak of the cheering brought a frown to Apache Kid's
face and sent him to the door speedily, with me at his heels.
The sheriff opened the door and out stepped Apache Kid. The first
breath of a shout from the crowd there he stopped in the middle. What
his face spoke I do not know, being behind him; but his right thumb
pointed over his shoulder, his left hand was at his lips, I think,--and
the cry stopped.
"Gentlemen," he said, and broke the cry that threatened again to rise
with a raised hand; "the lady within"--he got to the core of his remark
first--"has her own sorrow. We must think of her."
You could hear the gruff "That's what," and "That's no lie," and "That's
talking," and see heads nodded to neighbour's heads in the crowd.
But the question was how to get away? Apache Kid stepped down to the
street level and then, before we knew what was come to us we were
clutched by willing hands and, shoulder high, headed a silent procession
tramping in the dust out of ear-shot of the jail--that the woman within
might not feel her sorrow more bitter and lonely hearing the cheers that
were given to the men who had "wiped out the Farrell gang."
So much the populace knew had happened. That much had leaked out, and
the least that was expected of Apache Kid was that he would get out on
some hotel verandah and allow himself to be gazed upon and cheered and
make himself for a night an excuse for "celebration" and perhaps, also,
in the speech that he must needs make, give some slight outline of how
Farrell _got it_--to use (as Apache Kid would say) the phraseology of
the country.
*CHAPTER XXVI*
_*Apache Kid Makes a Speech*_
There was a good deal of the spirit of Coriolanus in Apache Kid, and he
knew the worth of all this laudation.
When we at last found ourselves jostled up onto the balcony of that
saloon which I spoke of once as one of the "toughest" houses in Baker
City, that very saloon at the door of which I had beheld the sheriff of
Baker City give an example of his "smartness," the throng was jostling
in the street and crying out:
"What's the matter with Apache Kid?--He's all right!"
Both question and answer in this cry were voiced always in one, not one
man crying out the question and another replying, and it made the cry
seem very droll to me.
Apache Kid was thrust to the front and the crowd huzzahed again and
shouted: "Speech!" And others cried out: "Tell us about Farrell's
gang."
So Apache Kid stepped to the rail and raised his head, and, "Gentlemen,"
he began, "this is a great honour to me;" and they all cried out again.
"If it is not," said he, "it should be."
I think the majority took this for humour and they laughed and wagged
their heads and looked up smiling, for more.
"When I think of how so shortly ago I merited your disapproval and now,
instead of gaining that, am welcomed so heartily and effusively, I
cannot but feel how deeply I am indebted to all the citizens--" he
paused and I heard him laugh in his throat, "of our progressive and
progressing city."
They gave vent to a bellow of pleasure and some cried out again:
"Farrell! Farrell! Tell us about Farrell."
"I must appeal to the sense of propriety," he said, "for which our
western country is famous. In the West we are all gentlemen."