The Lost Cabin Mine. Frederick Niven

You 've never been in the mountains, day in day out, with a man whose soul an altogether different god or devil made; with a man that you fervently hope, if there's any waking up after the last kick here, you won't find in your happy hunting-ground beyond. You won't have to come in between and hold us apart, you know. The mere presence of a third party is enough."

      He looked on me keenly a space and added:

      "Somehow I think that you will do more than keep off the bickering spirit. I think you 'll establish amicable relations."

      It was curious to observe how the illiterate Donoghue took his partner's speech so much for granted.

      "What's amicable?" he said.

      "Friendly," said Apache Kid.

      "Amicable, friendly," said Donoghue, thoughtfully. "Good word, amicable."

      "The trip would be worth a couple of hundred dollars to you," said Apache, with his eyes on mine. "And if we happened to be out over two months, at the rate of a hundred a month for the time beyond."

      "Well, that's straight enough talk, I guess," said Donoghue. "Is the deal on?"

      My financial condition itself was such as to preclude any doubt. Had I been told plainly that it was to the Lost Cabin Mine we were going and been offered a share in it I would, remembering Apache Kid and Donoghue of the verandah, as I may put it, in distinction from Apache Kid and Donoghue of to-night—well, I would have feared that some heated sudden turn of mind of one or the other or both of these men might prevent me coming into my own. Donoghue especially had a fearsome face to see. But there was no such suggestion. I was offered two hundred dollars and, now that the night fell and the silence deepened and the long range of hills gloomed on us, I thought I could understand that the presence of a third man might be well worth two hundred dollars to two men of very alien natures among the silence and the loneliness that would throw them together closely whether they would or not.

      "The deal is on," I said.

      We shook hands solemnly then and Donoghue looked toward Apache Kid as though all the programme was not yet completed. Apache Kid nodded and produced a roll of bills. The light was waning and he held them close to him as he withdrew one.

      "That'll make us square again," he said, handing me the roll. "I 've kept off a five; so now we 're not obliged to each other for anything."

      And then, as though to seal the compact and bear in upon me a thought of the expedition we were going upon, the sun disappeared behind the western hills and from somewhere out there, in the shadows and deeper shadows of the strange piled landscape, came a long, faint sound, half bay, half moan. It was the dusk cry of the mountain coyotes; and either the echo of it or another cry came down from the hills beyond the city, only the hum of which we heard there. And when that melancholy cry, or echo, had ended, a cold wind shuddered across the land; all that loneliness, that by day seemed to lure one ever with its sunlit peaks and its blue, meditative hollows, seemed now a place of terrors and strange occurrences; but the lure was still there, only a different lure,—a lure of terror and darkness instead of romance and sunlight.

CHAPTER VI

       Table of Contents

Farewell to Baker City

       Table of Contents

      e all came to our feet then, Apache Kid carefully flicking the sand from his clothing.

      "Now," he said, "that settles us. We 're quits." And we all walked slowly and silently back in company toward the city. When we came to Blaine's "coffee-joint" Apache Kid stopped, and told me he would see me later in the evening at the Laughlin House to arrange about the starting out on our venture. Donoghue wanted him to go on with him, but Apache Kid said he must see Blaine again before leaving the city.

      "I desire to leave a good impression of myself behind me," he said with a laugh. "I should like Blaine to feel sorry to hear of my demise when that occurs, and as things stand I don't think he 'd care, to use the language of the country, a continental cuss."

      So saying, with a wave of his hand, he entered Blaine's.

      At Baker Street corner Donoghue stopped.

      "I 'll be seeing you two days from now," he said.

      "Do we not start for two days then?" I asked.

      "O, Apache Kid will see you to-night and make all the arrangements about pulling out. So-long, just now."

      So I went on to my hotel and, thus rescued from poverty on the very day that I had the first taste of it, I felt very much contented and cheered, and it was with a light and hopeful heart that I wandered out, after my unusually late supper, along the waggon road as far as the foothill woods and back, breathing deep of the thin air of night and rejoicing in the starlight.

      When I returned to the hotel there was a considerable company upon the rear verandah, as I could see from quite a distance—dim, shadowy forms sprawled in the lounge chairs with the yellow-lit and open door behind shining out on the blue night, and over them was the lamp that always hung there in the evenings, where the parrot's cage hung by day.

      When I came on to the verandah I picked out Apache Kid at once.

      A man who evidently did not know him was saying:

      "What do you wear that kerchief for, sir, hanging away down your neck that way?"

      There were one or two laughs of other men, who thought they were about to see a man quietly baited. But Apache Kid was not the man to stand much baiting, even of a mild stamp.

      I think few of the men there, however, understood the nature that prompted him when he turned slowly in his chair and said:

      "Well, sir, I wear it for several reasons."

      "Oh! What's them?"

      "Well, the first reason is personal—I like to wear it."

      There was a grin still on the face of the questioner. He found nothing particularly crushing in this reply, but Apache went on softly: "Then again, I wear it so as to aid me in the study of the character of the men I meet."

      "O! How do you work that miracle?"

      "Well, when I meet a man who does n't seem to see anything strange in my wearing of the kerchief I know he has travelled a bit and seen the like elsewhere in our democratic America. Other men look at it and I can see they think it odd, but they say nothing. Well, that is a sign to me that they have not travelled where the handkerchief is used in this way, but I know that they are gentlemen all the same."

      There was a slight, a very slight, exulting note in his voice and I saw the faces of the men on the outside of the crowd turn to observe the speaker. I thought the man who had set this ball a-rolling looked a trifle perturbed, but Apache was not looking at him. He lay back in his chair, gazing before him with a calm face. "Then again," he said leisurely, as though he had the whole night to himself, "if I meet a man who sees it and asks why I wear it, I know that he is the sort of man about whom people say here,—in the language of the country,—'Don't worry about him; he 's a hog from Ontario and never been out of the bush before!'"

      There was a strained silence after these words. Some of the more self-reliant men broke it with a laugh. The most were silent.

      "I'm a hog—eh? You call me a hog?" cried the man, after looking on the faces of those who sat around. I think he would have swallowed Apache Kid's speech without a word of reply had it not been spoken before so large an audience.

      "I did not say so," said Apache Kid, "but if I were you, I would n't make things worse by getting nasty. I tried