CHAPTER XVIIThe Coming of Mike Canlan[image]here was a cold shiver ran in my spine at that second crack, for it was eerie to know that some live thing, man or beast, was following us up through the bushes."It's a lion, sure thing," Donoghue said behind me, "and it's goin' at this stalking of us darned careless, too. I wisht we could get to a clear place and give him a chance to show himself.""Lion?" asked I, astonished."Yes—panther, that is," said Apache Kid."In the phraseology of the country, that is," I suggested.Apache looked over his shoulder at me."You are pretty cool for a tenderfoot," he remarked. "This is a bad spot for us to be stalked by a beast like that. Let me come behind now, Larry," he continued. "We are getting to a clear place, I think, and he may spring before we get out.""Not you," said Larry. "Just you go on ahaid and let the lad keep in between."Here the bushes thinned out considerably and when we reached this opener part Donoghue bade us walk straight on."Don't look back," said he. "Let him think we don't know he's followin'. Give him a chance to cross this here glade. We'll stop just inside them further trees and if he shows himself there, we 'll get him then, sure thing. What between men and beasts we suttingly have been followed up some this trip, and I 'm gettin' tired of it. This here followin' up has got to end."But though we carried out Donoghue's suggestion, crossing the open space, entering again on the path where it continued down-hill in the forest again, and halting there, the "lion" did not show himself.It was here, while standing a little space, waiting for the panther's appearance, if panther it was that shadowed us, that Apache Kid pointed a finger at the ground before us, where a tiny trickle of water, in crossing the path, made it muddy and moist."See the deer marks?" he whispered. "Neat, aren't they? This, you see, is a game trail from the hills down to the lake——""No good," broke in Donoghue. "He ain't going to show himself."So we passed on, and soon the way became more precipitous; the underbrush cleared; the trees thinned; and in a jog trot we at last went rattling down the final incline and came right out with the impetus of that run upon the open ground around the lake, though of the lake itself, now that we were at its level, we could discern little—only tiny grey glimpses, so closely was it thronged about by rushes, and they so tall.A thousand frogs were singing, making quite a din in our ears, so pent in was the sound in that cup-like hollow. But weary as we were, we rejoiced to have come to our desired camp and soon were sitting fed and contented round the fire.Of all our camps so far this seemed to me the most secure. Consequently, it horrified me a little when Apache Kid remarked, taking his cigarette from his lips:"Where do you think Canlan will be to-night?"Donoghue considered the burning log:"Oh! Allowing for him getting on to us pulling out, even the day after we left, and allowing for him starting out right then, he can't be nigher here than a day's journey, coming in to the country the way he would do it—over the shoulder of Mount Baker and in that ways.""He 'll be over behind there, then," said Apache, pointing; "right over that ridge, sitting by his lonesome camp and perhaps half a dozen fellows dogging him up too, eh?""Like enough," said Donoghue; "but he's accustomed to bein' dogged up.""Those who live in glass houses..." remarked Apache Kid, with a laugh that had no real merriment in the ring of it.Donoghue raised his eyes to Apache's across the fire and laughed back. And they both seemed to fall into a reverie after these words. From their remarks I gathered that they believed that Canlan really knew the location of the mine. He had been simply waiting in Baker City, then, for fear of my two partners. So I sat silent and pondering. Presently Apache Kid snorted and seemed to fling the thoughts aside that had been occupying him. But anon he fell brooding again, biting on his lip and closing an eye to the glow.It was after one such long, meditative gazing into the glowing and leaping embers that he spoke to me, and with such a ring in his voice as caused me to look upon him with a new interest. The tone of the voice, it seemed to me, hinted at some deep thought."Where do you come from, Francis?" he asked. "What is your nationality?""Why, I'm a Cosmopolitan," said I, half smiling, as one is prone to do when a man asks him some trivial matter with a voice as serious as though he spoke of strange things."Yes; we all are," said Apache Kid, putting aside my lightness. "But is n't it Edinburgh you come from?""Yes," said I.He mused again at my reply, plucking his finger-knuckles, and then turned an eye to Donoghue, who was already surveying him under his watchful brows."Shall I tell him?" he asked."Tell him what?" said Donoghue, looking uncomfortable, I thought, as though this mood of his partner's was one he did not relish."Tell him what we are—how we live—all that?"From Apache to me and back again Donoghue glanced, and then: "Oh! tell, if you like," said he. "There won't no harm come from telling him. He's safe. He 's all right, is Francis."Again there was a pause."Well," said Apache Kid, finally, ending his reverie. "The fact is that we—Donoghue and I—except upon occasion, when we want to make some sort of a character for ourselves, to show a visible means of support,—the fact is, we are——""Spit it out," said Donoghue. "Spit it out. It ain't everybody has the courage to be."I considered what was coming."The fact is," said Apache Kid, "we are what they call in this country road-agents—make our living by holding up stage-coaches and——""By gum! we 've held up more nor stage-coaches," cried Donoghue, and began fumbling in an inner pocket with eager fingers."And banks," said Apache Kid, gazing on me to see the effect of this disclosure.Donoghue stretched across to me, his loose face gleaming with a kind of joy."Read that," he said. "Read what that says;" and he handed me a long newspaper cutting.What I read on the cutting was:"Daring Hold-Up of the Transcontinental.The Two-some Gang again at Work.""That's us," said Donoghue, gloating. "It reads pretty good, but Apache here says there ain't no sense in the headin' about the two-some gang—says them journalist boys is no good. Seems to me a right slick notice—that's us, anyway."Apache Kid seemed disturbed, annoyed."Well! what do you think?" he said, fixing me with his eye."I 'm sorry," said I.Donoghue threw back his head and laughed."It's not the right sort of way to live?" said Apache Kid, questioningly. "You know I can make out a fine case in its defence.""Yes," I replied. "I have no doubt you could, and that's just what makes me all the more sorry to think of your doing this. Still, I feel that you having told me prevents me stating an opinion.""If someone else had told——" he began."Then I might speak," said I."Should it not be the other way about?" he asked, half smiling."Perhaps it should," said I. "But if you honour me by telling me, it is enough for me just to say I am sorry. Would you have me preach?"He looked on me with great friendliness."I understand the sentiment," said he. "But I should like you to preach, if you wish.""Well," said I, "I have no doubt you could, with the brains you have and your turn for sophistry, make out a very entertaining defence for such a life. 'Murder as a fine art,' you know——""Murder?" asked Donoghue; but Apache Kid silenced him with a gesture, and I continued:"But neither you nor those who heard your defence could treat it otherwise than as a piece of airy and misplaced, misdirected wit, on a par with your misplaced love of adventure."He nodded at that part, and his face cleared a little."That but makes me all the more sorry," said I, "to know you are——" I paused. "A parasite!"I blurted out."Parasite!" he cried; and his hand flew down to his holster, wavered, and fell soundless on his crossed legs.It was the first time he had looked on me in anger."What's parasite?" asked Donoghue."A louse," said Apache Kid."Hell!" drawled Donoghue, and glanced at me. "You need lookin' after.""There are parasites and parasites," said I. "In this case it is more like these deer-lice we came by in the forest."We had suffered from these, but I have not said anything of them, for the subject is not pleasant."Well," drawled Donoghue. "They are fighters, anyway, they are. You kind o' respect them."Apache Kid smiled."Yes," he said, in a low voice, "it's the right word, nevertheless."Donoghue jeered."Waal! Here's where I come in! Here's the beauty of not being ediccated to big words nor what they mean, nor bein' able to follow a high-toned talk except the way a man follows a poor-blazed trail."Apache surveyed him with interest for a moment and then again turning to me he heaved a little sigh and said:"I wonder if you would do something for me after we get through with this expedition? If I were to give you a little wad of bills, enough for a year's holiday at home, I wonder if you 'd go and take a squint at the house where my folks lived when I left home; find out if they are still there, and if not, trace them up? You 'd need to promise me not to let that sentimental side of you run away with you. You 'd need to promise not to go and tell them I'm alive; for I 'm sure they have given me up for dead years ago and mourned the allotted space of time that men and women mourn—and forgotten. It would only be opening fresh wounds to hear of me. They have grieved for my death; I would not have them mourn for my life. But I—well, I sometimes wonder. You understand what I mean——""Watch your eye!" roared Donoghue. "Watch your——" but a shot out of the forest sent him flying along the ground, he having risen suddenly and stretched for his rifle.Instead of clutching it he went far beyond, ploughing the earth with his outstretched hands; and right on the first report came a second and Apache cried: "O!"He sagged down all in a heap, but I flung round for my revolver—the one with which I had had no practice. I heard the quick, dull plod of running feet and before I could get my finger on my weapon a voice was bellowing out:"Don't shoot, man; don't shoot! It's Canlan; Mike Canlan. You ain't hostile to Mike Canlan."I wheeled about, and there he was trailing his smoking rifle in his left hand and extending his right to me; Mike Canlan, little Mike Canlan with the beady eyes, the parchment-like, pock-marked face, and the boy's body.Had my revolver been to hand, he had been a dead man, I verily believe—he or I. As it was, I leapt on him crying:"Murderer! Murderer!"Down came my fist on his head and at the jar his rifle fell from his grasp. The next stroke took him on the lips, sending him backwards. I pounded him till my arms were weary, he lying there with his faded, pock-marked face and his colourless eyes dancing in pain and crying out: "Let up! Let up, you fool! We ain't hostile. It's Canlan!" he cried, between blows. "Mike Canlan."At last I did "let up" and stood back from him.He sat up and wiped the blood from his mouth and spat out a tooth."Ah, lad," he said. "Here's a fine way to repay me for savin' your life. Think I could n't have laid you out stark and stiff there aside them two?"My gorge rose to hear him talk thus."Easy I could have done it," he went on, "but I didn't. And why?"He sidled to me on his hams without attempting to rise, and held up a finger to me."Why, lad, you saved my life once, so I spared yours this blessed night. That's me, that's Mike Canlan. And see here, lad, you and me now——""Silence!" I cried, drawing back from his touch, as he crept nearer.I had seen murder done, of the most horrible kind. I had seen a big-hearted, sparkling-eyed man, not yet in his prime, struck out of life in a moment. What he was telling me of himself was nothing to me now. I only knew that I had come to like him and that he was gone—slain by this little, insignificant creature that you could not call a man. And I had seen another man, whom I did not altogether hate, sent to as summary an end. I held this man who talked in the sing-song voice at my feet in horror, in loathing. I bent to feel the heart of Apache Kid, for I thought I saw a movement in his sun-browned neck, as of a vein throbbing and—"O! They're dead, dead and done with," cried Canlan. "If they was n't, I 'd shove another shot into each of 'em just to make sure. But they 're dead men, for Canlan killed 'em. If they was n't, I 'd shove another shot into each of them!"The words rang in my ears with warning. I had just been on the point of trying to raise Apache Kid; a cry of joy was almost on my lips to think that life was not extinct; but the words warned me and I turned about."He's dead, ain't he?" said Canlan, and I lied to him."Yes," I replied. "He is dead, and as for you——""As for me—nothing!" said Canlan, and he looked along his gleaming barrel at where my heart fluttered in my breast."You and me," said he, "has to come to terms right now. Oh! I don't disrespec' you none for not takin' kindly to this. I like you all the better for it. But think of what you 've fallen into all through me. Here 's half shares in the Lost Cabin Mine for you now instead of a paltry third—half shares, my lad. How does that catch you?"I was not going to tell him the terms I was here on, but I said:"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 XVIIIThe Lost Cabin is Found[image]ome, 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 havecrawledalong 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 XIXCanlan Hears Voices[image]ou 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 herepushthat 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."I turned on him, the unspoken question in my face, I have no doubt.All the fear had departed from his face now as he snatched up a bone out of one of the shelves.These bones, I should say, were all placed as neatly and systematically as you could wish, built up in stacks, and all clear and clean as though they had been bleached."This here was his forearm," said Canlan, his yellow eyeballs suddenly afire with a fearsome light; and he rapped me over the knuckles with a human elbow."Ain't it terrible?" he said."It is terrible," said I."Ah!" he cried. "But I don't mean what you mean; I mean ain't it terrible to think o' that?" and he pointed to the cupboard, "to think o' comin' to that—bein' picked clean like that—little bits o' you runnin' about all over them almighty hills inside the rats' bellies and your bones piled away to turn yellow in a spidery cupboard."I stepped back from his grinning face."But how do these bones come there?" I said."It's the rats," he replied, "them mountain rats always pile away the bones o' everything they eat—make a reg'lar cache o' them; what for I dunno; but they do; that's all."I stood then looking about the place, thinking of the end of that "number three," all the horror of his last hours in my mind; and as I was thus employed, with absent mien, suddenly Canlan laid his hand on my arm."What you lookin' that queer, strained ways for?" he whispered, putting his face within an inch of mine, so that I stepped back from the near presence of him. "That was a mighty queer look in your eyes right now. Say; do you know what you would make? You'd make an easy mark for me to mesmerise. You 'd make a fine medium, you would."I looked at him more shrewdly now, thinking he was assuredly losing his last hold on reason; but he flung back a step from me."O! You think me mad?" he cried, and verily he looked mad then. "Eh? Not me. You don't think I can mesmerise you? I've mesmerised heaps—men too, let alone women," and he grinned in a very disgusting fashion. "Say! If we could only see a jack-rabbit from the door o' this shack, I 'd let you see what I could do. I 'd give you an example o' my powers. I can bring a jack-rabbit to me, supposin' he's lopin' along a hillside and sees me. I jest looks at him andwillshim to stop—and he stops. And then I wills him to come to me—and he comes. Mind once I was tellin' the boys at the Molly Magee about bein' able to do it and they put up the bets I could n't—thought I was jest bluffin' 'em, and I went right out o' the bunkhouse a little ways and fetched a chipmunk clean off a rock where he was settin' lookin' at us,—there were n't no jack-rabbits there,—fetched him right into my hand. And then a queer, mad feelin' come over me—I can't just tell you about it—I don't just exactly understand it myself. I closes my hand on that chipmunk and jest crushed him dead atween my fingers. And suthin' seemed kind o' relieved here then, in the front o' my head, right here. The boys never forgot that. They kind o' lay away off from me after that—did n't like it. Yes, I could mesmerise you."He waved his hands suddenly before my eyes."Feel any peculiar sensation at that?" he said."Yes," said I."What like?" he asked."I feel that I 'll not let you do it again," said I."Scared like? Feel kind o' slippin' away?""No," I said quietly: "not scared one little bit. But I object to your waving your hands within an inch of my face. Any man of grit would n't allow it.""Well, well, say no more. We 'd better be investigating this yere shack. God! If there was only a drink on the premises. I tell youthey 'recomin' on again, and when they come on I 'm fearsome—I am."He looked round the place again and then cried out in a voice of agony:"Look here! I don't want to lose holt o' myself yet; perhaps a little bit of grub now might help me. I reckon I might be able to shove some down my neck as a dooty. You go and make up the fire outside, do."He spoke this in a beseeching whine. To see the way the creature changed and veered about in his manner was interesting."We ain't goin' to sleep in here to-night, anyways, not for Jo, wi' them mountain rats comin' in on us. It'll take quite a while o' huntin' to get all their holes filled up. You go and make dinner. I could do a flapjack and a slice o' bacon, I think, with a bit o' a struggle and some resolution like."Anything that might prevent me having a madman on my hands in that wilderness was not to be ignored, so I went out and ran down the slope to where the bushes climbed, and gathered fuel, a great armful, and so came back again and made up a fire.Water was not so easy to find, but a muddy and boggy part of the hill led me to a spring, and I set to work on preparing food.With all this coming and going I must have been busied quite half an hour before even getting the length of mixing the dough. Canlan, by that time, had got the windlass out and had lugged it across to the covered shaft beside the spur of outcropping rock that ran down parallel with the ridge in the lee of which I had lit the fire. He went back to the cabin and carried out the coil of rope, and had just got that length in his employ when I called him over for our meal; our evening meal it was, for, intent on our labours, we had not noticed how the sun was departing. All the vasty world of hollows below us was brimmed with darkness. All the peaks and the mountain ridges marching one upon the other into the shadowing east were lit, toward us, with the last light when Canlan sat down to force himself to eat. But I saw he had difficulty in swallowing. The jerking of face and hands, I also perceived, was increasing past ignoring. So too, presently became the fixed stare of his eye upon us as he sat with his hand frozen on a sudden half-way to his mouth."Listen! Don't you hear nuthin'?" he asked, hoarse and low."Nothing," said I."Ah! It's jest them fancies," said he, and fell silent.Then again, with a strange, nervous twitch and truly awful eyes, he said in a whisper, "Say, tell me true? Did n't you hear suthin' right now?""I heard a coyote howl," I said."No, no; but somebody whispering?" he said. "Two or three people all huddling close somewhere and tellin' things about me. By gum! I won't have it! I dursent have it!" he said in a low scream—which is the best description of his voice then that I can give you.I shuddered. He was a terrible companion to have here on this bleak, windy hillside, with the thin trees below us marching down in serried ranks to the thicker forest below, and the scarped peaks showing against the pale moon that hung in the sky awaiting the sun's going.I shook my head."Sure?" he asked."Positive," said I.He bent toward me and said in a small voice, "Keep your eye on me now. I ain't goin' to ask you another time, for I think when I speak they stop a-whispering; but I'll jest twitch up my thumb like this—see?—fer a signal to you when I hear 'em."He sat hushed again; and then suddenly his eyes started and he raised his thumb, turning a face to me that glittered pale like lead."Now?" he gasped."Nothing," I said: "not a sound.""Ah, but I spoke there," he said. "I ought n't to have spoken; that scared 'em; and they quit the whispering when they hear me."He sat again quiet, his head on the side, listening, and I watching his hand, thinking it best to humour him and to try to convince him out of this lunacy.But my blood ran chill as I sat, and his jaw fell suddenly in horror for a voice quavering and ghastly cried out from somewhere near by, "Mike Canlan! Mike Canlan! I see you, Mike Canlan!"And a horrible burst of laughter that seemed to come from no earthly throat broke the silence, died away, and a long gust of wind whispered past us on the hill-crest.It had been evident to me that though Canlan bade me hearken for the whispering voices that he himself did not actually believe in their existence. He had still sufficient sense left to know that the whispering was in his own fancy, the outcome of drink and of—I need not say his conscience, but—the knowledge that he had perpetrated some fearsome deeds in his day, deeds that it were better not to hear spoken in the sunlight or whispered in the dusk.But this cry, out of the growing night, real and weird, so far from restoring equanimity to his mind appeared to unhinge his mental faculties wholly. His eyeballs started in their sockets; and there came the cry again:"Mike Canlan! Mike Canlan! I 'm on your trail, Mike Canlan!"As for myself, I had no superstitious fears after the first cry, though I must confess that at the first demented cry my heart stood still in a brief, savage terror. But I speedily told myself that none but a mortal voice cried then; though truly the voice was like no mortal voice I had ever heard.It was otherwise with Canlan. Fear, abject fear, held him now and he turned his head all rigid like an automaton and, in a voice that sounded as though his tongue filled his mouth so that he could hardly speak, he mumbled: "It's him. It's Death!"Aye, it was death; but not as Canlan imagined.There was silence now, on the bleak, black hill, and though I had mastered the terror that gripped me on hearing the voice, the silence that followed was a thing more terrible, not to be borne without action.Then suddenly the voice broke out afresh quite close and Canlan turned his head stiffly again and I also looked up whence the voice came—and there was the face of Larry Donoghue looking down on us from the rib of rocky hill under whose shelter we sat. There was a trickle of blood, or a scar—it was doubtful which—from his temple down his long, spare jaw to the corner of the loose mouth; the eyes stared down on us like the eyes of a dead man, blank and wide.He stretched out his arms and gripped in the declivity of the hill with his fingers, crooked like talons, and pulled himself forward; but at that tug he lost his balance, lying on his belly as he was, and came down the slope, sliding on his face, the kerchief still about his head as I had seen him when I thought he had breathed his last.In Canlan's mind there was no question but that this was Larry Donoghue's wraith. He tried to cry out and could not, gave one gulping gasp in his throat, and when Donoghue slid down the bank, as I have described, Canlan leapt to his feet and ran for it—ran without any intelligence, straight before him.I have told you that the next rib of rock broke off sheer and went down in a declivity. Thither Canlan's terror took him; and the last I saw of him was his legs straddled in the run, out in mid-air, as though to take another stride; and then down he went. But it was to Donoghue I turned and strove to raise him. For one fleeting moment he seemed to know me; our eyes met and then the light of recognition passed out of his and he sank back. It was a dead man I held in my arms, and though I had never greatly cared for him, that last glance of his eye was so full of yearning, so pathetic, so helpless that I felt a lump in my throat and a thickness at my heart and as I laid him back again I burst into a flood of tears that shook my whole frame.A strange, gusty sound in my ear and the feeling of a hot vapour on my neck brought me suddenly round in, if not fear, something akin to it. But I think absolute fear was pretty well a thing I should never know again after these occurrences.It was Canlan's horse standing over me snuffing me; and when I raised my head he gave a quiet whinny and muzzled his white nose to me. Perhaps in his mute heart the horse knew that these sounds of mine bespoke suffering, and truly these pack-horses draw very close to men, in the hills.But though the horse brought me back in a way to manliness and calm it was a miserable night that I spent there. I sat up and with my chin in my hands remained gazing vacantly eastwards until the morning broke in my eyes. And behind me stood the horse thus till morning, ever and again touching my shoulder with his wet nose, his warm breath puffing on my cheek.I was thankful, indeed, more than I can tell you, for that companionship. And now and then I put up my hand and when I did so the beast's head would come gently down for me to clap his nose, and doing so I felt myself not altogether alone and friendless on that hill of terror and of death.
CHAPTER XVII
The Coming of Mike Canlan
[image]here was a cold shiver ran in my spine at that second crack, for it was eerie to know that some live thing, man or beast, was following us up through the bushes.
[image]
[image]
"It's a lion, sure thing," Donoghue said behind me, "and it's goin' at this stalking of us darned careless, too. I wisht we could get to a clear place and give him a chance to show himself."
"Lion?" asked I, astonished.
"Yes—panther, that is," said Apache Kid.
"In the phraseology of the country, that is," I suggested.
Apache looked over his shoulder at me.
"You are pretty cool for a tenderfoot," he remarked. "This is a bad spot for us to be stalked by a beast like that. Let me come behind now, Larry," he continued. "We are getting to a clear place, I think, and he may spring before we get out."
"Not you," said Larry. "Just you go on ahaid and let the lad keep in between."
Here the bushes thinned out considerably and when we reached this opener part Donoghue bade us walk straight on.
"Don't look back," said he. "Let him think we don't know he's followin'. Give him a chance to cross this here glade. We'll stop just inside them further trees and if he shows himself there, we 'll get him then, sure thing. What between men and beasts we suttingly have been followed up some this trip, and I 'm gettin' tired of it. This here followin' up has got to end."
But though we carried out Donoghue's suggestion, crossing the open space, entering again on the path where it continued down-hill in the forest again, and halting there, the "lion" did not show himself.
It was here, while standing a little space, waiting for the panther's appearance, if panther it was that shadowed us, that Apache Kid pointed a finger at the ground before us, where a tiny trickle of water, in crossing the path, made it muddy and moist.
"See the deer marks?" he whispered. "Neat, aren't they? This, you see, is a game trail from the hills down to the lake——"
"No good," broke in Donoghue. "He ain't going to show himself."
So we passed on, and soon the way became more precipitous; the underbrush cleared; the trees thinned; and in a jog trot we at last went rattling down the final incline and came right out with the impetus of that run upon the open ground around the lake, though of the lake itself, now that we were at its level, we could discern little—only tiny grey glimpses, so closely was it thronged about by rushes, and they so tall.
A thousand frogs were singing, making quite a din in our ears, so pent in was the sound in that cup-like hollow. But weary as we were, we rejoiced to have come to our desired camp and soon were sitting fed and contented round the fire.
Of all our camps so far this seemed to me the most secure. Consequently, it horrified me a little when Apache Kid remarked, taking his cigarette from his lips:
"Where do you think Canlan will be to-night?"
Donoghue considered the burning log:
"Oh! Allowing for him getting on to us pulling out, even the day after we left, and allowing for him starting out right then, he can't be nigher here than a day's journey, coming in to the country the way he would do it—over the shoulder of Mount Baker and in that ways."
"He 'll be over behind there, then," said Apache, pointing; "right over that ridge, sitting by his lonesome camp and perhaps half a dozen fellows dogging him up too, eh?"
"Like enough," said Donoghue; "but he's accustomed to bein' dogged up."
"Those who live in glass houses..." remarked Apache Kid, with a laugh that had no real merriment in the ring of it.
Donoghue raised his eyes to Apache's across the fire and laughed back. And they both seemed to fall into a reverie after these words. From their remarks I gathered that they believed that Canlan really knew the location of the mine. He had been simply waiting in Baker City, then, for fear of my two partners. So I sat silent and pondering. Presently Apache Kid snorted and seemed to fling the thoughts aside that had been occupying him. But anon he fell brooding again, biting on his lip and closing an eye to the glow.
It was after one such long, meditative gazing into the glowing and leaping embers that he spoke to me, and with such a ring in his voice as caused me to look upon him with a new interest. The tone of the voice, it seemed to me, hinted at some deep thought.
"Where do you come from, Francis?" he asked. "What is your nationality?"
"Why, I'm a Cosmopolitan," said I, half smiling, as one is prone to do when a man asks him some trivial matter with a voice as serious as though he spoke of strange things.
"Yes; we all are," said Apache Kid, putting aside my lightness. "But is n't it Edinburgh you come from?"
"Yes," said I.
He mused again at my reply, plucking his finger-knuckles, and then turned an eye to Donoghue, who was already surveying him under his watchful brows.
"Shall I tell him?" he asked.
"Tell him what?" said Donoghue, looking uncomfortable, I thought, as though this mood of his partner's was one he did not relish.
"Tell him what we are—how we live—all that?"
From Apache to me and back again Donoghue glanced, and then: "Oh! tell, if you like," said he. "There won't no harm come from telling him. He's safe. He 's all right, is Francis."
Again there was a pause.
"Well," said Apache Kid, finally, ending his reverie. "The fact is that we—Donoghue and I—except upon occasion, when we want to make some sort of a character for ourselves, to show a visible means of support,—the fact is, we are——"
"Spit it out," said Donoghue. "Spit it out. It ain't everybody has the courage to be."
I considered what was coming.
"The fact is," said Apache Kid, "we are what they call in this country road-agents—make our living by holding up stage-coaches and——"
"By gum! we 've held up more nor stage-coaches," cried Donoghue, and began fumbling in an inner pocket with eager fingers.
"And banks," said Apache Kid, gazing on me to see the effect of this disclosure.
Donoghue stretched across to me, his loose face gleaming with a kind of joy.
"Read that," he said. "Read what that says;" and he handed me a long newspaper cutting.
What I read on the cutting was:
"Daring Hold-Up of the Transcontinental.The Two-some Gang again at Work."
"That's us," said Donoghue, gloating. "It reads pretty good, but Apache here says there ain't no sense in the headin' about the two-some gang—says them journalist boys is no good. Seems to me a right slick notice—that's us, anyway."
Apache Kid seemed disturbed, annoyed.
"Well! what do you think?" he said, fixing me with his eye.
"I 'm sorry," said I.
Donoghue threw back his head and laughed.
"It's not the right sort of way to live?" said Apache Kid, questioningly. "You know I can make out a fine case in its defence."
"Yes," I replied. "I have no doubt you could, and that's just what makes me all the more sorry to think of your doing this. Still, I feel that you having told me prevents me stating an opinion."
"If someone else had told——" he began.
"Then I might speak," said I.
"Should it not be the other way about?" he asked, half smiling.
"Perhaps it should," said I. "But if you honour me by telling me, it is enough for me just to say I am sorry. Would you have me preach?"
He looked on me with great friendliness.
"I understand the sentiment," said he. "But I should like you to preach, if you wish."
"Well," said I, "I have no doubt you could, with the brains you have and your turn for sophistry, make out a very entertaining defence for such a life. 'Murder as a fine art,' you know——"
"Murder?" asked Donoghue; but Apache Kid silenced him with a gesture, and I continued:
"But neither you nor those who heard your defence could treat it otherwise than as a piece of airy and misplaced, misdirected wit, on a par with your misplaced love of adventure."
He nodded at that part, and his face cleared a little.
"That but makes me all the more sorry," said I, "to know you are——" I paused. "A parasite!"
I blurted out.
"Parasite!" he cried; and his hand flew down to his holster, wavered, and fell soundless on his crossed legs.
It was the first time he had looked on me in anger.
"What's parasite?" asked Donoghue.
"A louse," said Apache Kid.
"Hell!" drawled Donoghue, and glanced at me. "You need lookin' after."
"There are parasites and parasites," said I. "In this case it is more like these deer-lice we came by in the forest."
We had suffered from these, but I have not said anything of them, for the subject is not pleasant.
"Well," drawled Donoghue. "They are fighters, anyway, they are. You kind o' respect them."
Apache Kid smiled.
"Yes," he said, in a low voice, "it's the right word, nevertheless."
Donoghue jeered.
"Waal! Here's where I come in! Here's the beauty of not being ediccated to big words nor what they mean, nor bein' able to follow a high-toned talk except the way a man follows a poor-blazed trail."
Apache surveyed him with interest for a moment and then again turning to me he heaved a little sigh and said:
"I wonder if you would do something for me after we get through with this expedition? If I were to give you a little wad of bills, enough for a year's holiday at home, I wonder if you 'd go and take a squint at the house where my folks lived when I left home; find out if they are still there, and if not, trace them up? You 'd need to promise me not to let that sentimental side of you run away with you. You 'd need to promise not to go and tell them I'm alive; for I 'm sure they have given me up for dead years ago and mourned the allotted space of time that men and women mourn—and forgotten. It would only be opening fresh wounds to hear of me. They have grieved for my death; I would not have them mourn for my life. But I—well, I sometimes wonder. You understand what I mean——"
"Watch your eye!" roared Donoghue. "Watch your——" but a shot out of the forest sent him flying along the ground, he having risen suddenly and stretched for his rifle.
Instead of clutching it he went far beyond, ploughing the earth with his outstretched hands; and right on the first report came a second and Apache cried: "O!"
He sagged down all in a heap, but I flung round for my revolver—the one with which I had had no practice. I heard the quick, dull plod of running feet and before I could get my finger on my weapon a voice was bellowing out:
"Don't shoot, man; don't shoot! It's Canlan; Mike Canlan. You ain't hostile to Mike Canlan."
I wheeled about, and there he was trailing his smoking rifle in his left hand and extending his right to me; Mike Canlan, little Mike Canlan with the beady eyes, the parchment-like, pock-marked face, and the boy's body.
Had my revolver been to hand, he had been a dead man, I verily believe—he or I. As it was, I leapt on him crying:
"Murderer! Murderer!"
Down came my fist on his head and at the jar his rifle fell from his grasp. The next stroke took him on the lips, sending him backwards. I pounded him till my arms were weary, he lying there with his faded, pock-marked face and his colourless eyes dancing in pain and crying out: "Let up! Let up, you fool! We ain't hostile. It's Canlan!" he cried, between blows. "Mike Canlan."
At last I did "let up" and stood back from him.
He sat up and wiped the blood from his mouth and spat out a tooth.
"Ah, lad," he said. "Here's a fine way to repay me for savin' your life. Think I could n't have laid you out stark and stiff there aside them two?"
My gorge rose to hear him talk thus.
"Easy I could have done it," he went on, "but I didn't. And why?"
He sidled to me on his hams without attempting to rise, and held up a finger to me.
"Why, lad, you saved my life once, so I spared yours this blessed night. That's me, that's Mike Canlan. And see here, lad, you and me now——"
"Silence!" I cried, drawing back from his touch, as he crept nearer.
I had seen murder done, of the most horrible kind. I had seen a big-hearted, sparkling-eyed man, not yet in his prime, struck out of life in a moment. What he was telling me of himself was nothing to me now. I only knew that I had come to like him and that he was gone—slain by this little, insignificant creature that you could not call a man. And I had seen another man, whom I did not altogether hate, sent to as summary an end. I held this man who talked in the sing-song voice at my feet in horror, in loathing. I bent to feel the heart of Apache Kid, for I thought I saw a movement in his sun-browned neck, as of a vein throbbing and—
"O! They're dead, dead and done with," cried Canlan. "If they was n't, I 'd shove another shot into each of 'em just to make sure. But they 're dead men, for Canlan killed 'em. If they was n't, I 'd shove another shot into each of them!"
The words rang in my ears with warning. I had just been on the point of trying to raise Apache Kid; a cry of joy was almost on my lips to think that life was not extinct; but the words warned me and I turned about.
"He's dead, ain't he?" said Canlan, and I lied to him.
"Yes," I replied. "He is dead, and as for you——"
"As for me—nothing!" said Canlan, and he looked along his gleaming barrel at where my heart fluttered in my breast.
"You and me," said he, "has to come to terms right now. Oh! I don't disrespec' you none for not takin' kindly to this. I like you all the better for it. But think of what you 've fallen into all through me. Here 's half shares in the Lost Cabin Mine for you now instead of a paltry third—half shares, my lad. How does that catch you?"
I was not going to tell him the terms I was here on, but I said:
"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
[image]ome, 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."
[image]
[image]
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 havecrawledalong 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
[image]ou 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.
[image]
[image]
"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 herepushthat 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."
I turned on him, the unspoken question in my face, I have no doubt.
All the fear had departed from his face now as he snatched up a bone out of one of the shelves.
These bones, I should say, were all placed as neatly and systematically as you could wish, built up in stacks, and all clear and clean as though they had been bleached.
"This here was his forearm," said Canlan, his yellow eyeballs suddenly afire with a fearsome light; and he rapped me over the knuckles with a human elbow.
"Ain't it terrible?" he said.
"It is terrible," said I.
"Ah!" he cried. "But I don't mean what you mean; I mean ain't it terrible to think o' that?" and he pointed to the cupboard, "to think o' comin' to that—bein' picked clean like that—little bits o' you runnin' about all over them almighty hills inside the rats' bellies and your bones piled away to turn yellow in a spidery cupboard."
I stepped back from his grinning face.
"But how do these bones come there?" I said.
"It's the rats," he replied, "them mountain rats always pile away the bones o' everything they eat—make a reg'lar cache o' them; what for I dunno; but they do; that's all."
I stood then looking about the place, thinking of the end of that "number three," all the horror of his last hours in my mind; and as I was thus employed, with absent mien, suddenly Canlan laid his hand on my arm.
"What you lookin' that queer, strained ways for?" he whispered, putting his face within an inch of mine, so that I stepped back from the near presence of him. "That was a mighty queer look in your eyes right now. Say; do you know what you would make? You'd make an easy mark for me to mesmerise. You 'd make a fine medium, you would."
I looked at him more shrewdly now, thinking he was assuredly losing his last hold on reason; but he flung back a step from me.
"O! You think me mad?" he cried, and verily he looked mad then. "Eh? Not me. You don't think I can mesmerise you? I've mesmerised heaps—men too, let alone women," and he grinned in a very disgusting fashion. "Say! If we could only see a jack-rabbit from the door o' this shack, I 'd let you see what I could do. I 'd give you an example o' my powers. I can bring a jack-rabbit to me, supposin' he's lopin' along a hillside and sees me. I jest looks at him andwillshim to stop—and he stops. And then I wills him to come to me—and he comes. Mind once I was tellin' the boys at the Molly Magee about bein' able to do it and they put up the bets I could n't—thought I was jest bluffin' 'em, and I went right out o' the bunkhouse a little ways and fetched a chipmunk clean off a rock where he was settin' lookin' at us,—there were n't no jack-rabbits there,—fetched him right into my hand. And then a queer, mad feelin' come over me—I can't just tell you about it—I don't just exactly understand it myself. I closes my hand on that chipmunk and jest crushed him dead atween my fingers. And suthin' seemed kind o' relieved here then, in the front o' my head, right here. The boys never forgot that. They kind o' lay away off from me after that—did n't like it. Yes, I could mesmerise you."
He waved his hands suddenly before my eyes.
"Feel any peculiar sensation at that?" he said.
"Yes," said I.
"What like?" he asked.
"I feel that I 'll not let you do it again," said I.
"Scared like? Feel kind o' slippin' away?"
"No," I said quietly: "not scared one little bit. But I object to your waving your hands within an inch of my face. Any man of grit would n't allow it."
"Well, well, say no more. We 'd better be investigating this yere shack. God! If there was only a drink on the premises. I tell youthey 'recomin' on again, and when they come on I 'm fearsome—I am."
He looked round the place again and then cried out in a voice of agony:
"Look here! I don't want to lose holt o' myself yet; perhaps a little bit of grub now might help me. I reckon I might be able to shove some down my neck as a dooty. You go and make up the fire outside, do."
He spoke this in a beseeching whine. To see the way the creature changed and veered about in his manner was interesting.
"We ain't goin' to sleep in here to-night, anyways, not for Jo, wi' them mountain rats comin' in on us. It'll take quite a while o' huntin' to get all their holes filled up. You go and make dinner. I could do a flapjack and a slice o' bacon, I think, with a bit o' a struggle and some resolution like."
Anything that might prevent me having a madman on my hands in that wilderness was not to be ignored, so I went out and ran down the slope to where the bushes climbed, and gathered fuel, a great armful, and so came back again and made up a fire.
Water was not so easy to find, but a muddy and boggy part of the hill led me to a spring, and I set to work on preparing food.
With all this coming and going I must have been busied quite half an hour before even getting the length of mixing the dough. Canlan, by that time, had got the windlass out and had lugged it across to the covered shaft beside the spur of outcropping rock that ran down parallel with the ridge in the lee of which I had lit the fire. He went back to the cabin and carried out the coil of rope, and had just got that length in his employ when I called him over for our meal; our evening meal it was, for, intent on our labours, we had not noticed how the sun was departing. All the vasty world of hollows below us was brimmed with darkness. All the peaks and the mountain ridges marching one upon the other into the shadowing east were lit, toward us, with the last light when Canlan sat down to force himself to eat. But I saw he had difficulty in swallowing. The jerking of face and hands, I also perceived, was increasing past ignoring. So too, presently became the fixed stare of his eye upon us as he sat with his hand frozen on a sudden half-way to his mouth.
"Listen! Don't you hear nuthin'?" he asked, hoarse and low.
"Nothing," said I.
"Ah! It's jest them fancies," said he, and fell silent.
Then again, with a strange, nervous twitch and truly awful eyes, he said in a whisper, "Say, tell me true? Did n't you hear suthin' right now?"
"I heard a coyote howl," I said.
"No, no; but somebody whispering?" he said. "Two or three people all huddling close somewhere and tellin' things about me. By gum! I won't have it! I dursent have it!" he said in a low scream—which is the best description of his voice then that I can give you.
I shuddered. He was a terrible companion to have here on this bleak, windy hillside, with the thin trees below us marching down in serried ranks to the thicker forest below, and the scarped peaks showing against the pale moon that hung in the sky awaiting the sun's going.
I shook my head.
"Sure?" he asked.
"Positive," said I.
He bent toward me and said in a small voice, "Keep your eye on me now. I ain't goin' to ask you another time, for I think when I speak they stop a-whispering; but I'll jest twitch up my thumb like this—see?—fer a signal to you when I hear 'em."
He sat hushed again; and then suddenly his eyes started and he raised his thumb, turning a face to me that glittered pale like lead.
"Now?" he gasped.
"Nothing," I said: "not a sound."
"Ah, but I spoke there," he said. "I ought n't to have spoken; that scared 'em; and they quit the whispering when they hear me."
He sat again quiet, his head on the side, listening, and I watching his hand, thinking it best to humour him and to try to convince him out of this lunacy.
But my blood ran chill as I sat, and his jaw fell suddenly in horror for a voice quavering and ghastly cried out from somewhere near by, "Mike Canlan! Mike Canlan! I see you, Mike Canlan!"
And a horrible burst of laughter that seemed to come from no earthly throat broke the silence, died away, and a long gust of wind whispered past us on the hill-crest.
It had been evident to me that though Canlan bade me hearken for the whispering voices that he himself did not actually believe in their existence. He had still sufficient sense left to know that the whispering was in his own fancy, the outcome of drink and of—I need not say his conscience, but—the knowledge that he had perpetrated some fearsome deeds in his day, deeds that it were better not to hear spoken in the sunlight or whispered in the dusk.
But this cry, out of the growing night, real and weird, so far from restoring equanimity to his mind appeared to unhinge his mental faculties wholly. His eyeballs started in their sockets; and there came the cry again:
"Mike Canlan! Mike Canlan! I 'm on your trail, Mike Canlan!"
As for myself, I had no superstitious fears after the first cry, though I must confess that at the first demented cry my heart stood still in a brief, savage terror. But I speedily told myself that none but a mortal voice cried then; though truly the voice was like no mortal voice I had ever heard.
It was otherwise with Canlan. Fear, abject fear, held him now and he turned his head all rigid like an automaton and, in a voice that sounded as though his tongue filled his mouth so that he could hardly speak, he mumbled: "It's him. It's Death!"
Aye, it was death; but not as Canlan imagined.
There was silence now, on the bleak, black hill, and though I had mastered the terror that gripped me on hearing the voice, the silence that followed was a thing more terrible, not to be borne without action.
Then suddenly the voice broke out afresh quite close and Canlan turned his head stiffly again and I also looked up whence the voice came—and there was the face of Larry Donoghue looking down on us from the rib of rocky hill under whose shelter we sat. There was a trickle of blood, or a scar—it was doubtful which—from his temple down his long, spare jaw to the corner of the loose mouth; the eyes stared down on us like the eyes of a dead man, blank and wide.
He stretched out his arms and gripped in the declivity of the hill with his fingers, crooked like talons, and pulled himself forward; but at that tug he lost his balance, lying on his belly as he was, and came down the slope, sliding on his face, the kerchief still about his head as I had seen him when I thought he had breathed his last.
In Canlan's mind there was no question but that this was Larry Donoghue's wraith. He tried to cry out and could not, gave one gulping gasp in his throat, and when Donoghue slid down the bank, as I have described, Canlan leapt to his feet and ran for it—ran without any intelligence, straight before him.
I have told you that the next rib of rock broke off sheer and went down in a declivity. Thither Canlan's terror took him; and the last I saw of him was his legs straddled in the run, out in mid-air, as though to take another stride; and then down he went. But it was to Donoghue I turned and strove to raise him. For one fleeting moment he seemed to know me; our eyes met and then the light of recognition passed out of his and he sank back. It was a dead man I held in my arms, and though I had never greatly cared for him, that last glance of his eye was so full of yearning, so pathetic, so helpless that I felt a lump in my throat and a thickness at my heart and as I laid him back again I burst into a flood of tears that shook my whole frame.
A strange, gusty sound in my ear and the feeling of a hot vapour on my neck brought me suddenly round in, if not fear, something akin to it. But I think absolute fear was pretty well a thing I should never know again after these occurrences.
It was Canlan's horse standing over me snuffing me; and when I raised my head he gave a quiet whinny and muzzled his white nose to me. Perhaps in his mute heart the horse knew that these sounds of mine bespoke suffering, and truly these pack-horses draw very close to men, in the hills.
But though the horse brought me back in a way to manliness and calm it was a miserable night that I spent there. I sat up and with my chin in my hands remained gazing vacantly eastwards until the morning broke in my eyes. And behind me stood the horse thus till morning, ever and again touching my shoulder with his wet nose, his warm breath puffing on my cheek.
I was thankful, indeed, more than I can tell you, for that companionship. And now and then I put up my hand and when I did so the beast's head would come gently down for me to clap his nose, and doing so I felt myself not altogether alone and friendless on that hill of terror and of death.