was no part of their FIRST plan”’ said Demorest, “which was only robbery. Listen!” He hurriedly recounted his experience of the preceding night to the astonished Stacy. “No, the fire was an afterthought and revenge,” he added sternly.
“But you say you cut the robber in the hand; there would be no difficulty in identifying him by that.”
“I wounded only a HAND,” said Demorest. “But there was a HEAD in that attempt that I never saw.” He then revealed his own half-suspicions, but how they were apparently refuted by the bravado of Steptoe and Whiskey Dick.
“Then that was the reason THEY didn’t gather at the fire,” said Stacy quickly.
“Ah!” said Demorest, “then YOU too suspected them?”
Stacy hesitated, and then said abruptly, “Yes.”
Demorest was silent for a moment.
“Why didn’t you tell me this this morning?” he said gently.
Stacy pointed to the distant Barker. “I didn’t want you to tell him. I thought it better for one partner to keep a secret from two than for the two to keep it from one. Why didn’t you tell me of your experience last night?”
“I am afraid it was for the same reason,” said Demorest, with a faint smile. “And it sometimes seems to me, Jim, that we ought to imitate Barker’s frankness. In our dread of tainting him with our own knowledge of evil we are sending him out into the world very poorly equipped, for all his three hundred thousand dollars.”
“I reckon you’re right,” said Stacy briefly, extending his hand. “Shake on that!”
The two men grasped each other’s hands.
“And he’s no fool, either,” continued Demorest. “When we met Steptoe on the road, without a word from me, he closed up alongside, with his hand on the lock of his rifle. And I hadn’t the heart to praise him or laugh it off.”
Nevertheless they were both silent as the object of their criticism bounded down the trail towards them. He had seen the funeral pyre. It was awfully sad, it was awfully lovely, but there was something grand in it! Who could have thought Stacy could be so poetic? But he wanted to tell them something else that was mighty pretty.
“What was it?” said Demorest.
“Well,” said Barker, “don’t laugh! But you know that Jack Hamlin? Well, boys, he’s been hovering around us on his mustang, keeping us and that pack-mule in sight ever since we left. Sometimes he’s on a side trail off to the right, sometimes off to the left, but always at the same distance. I didn’t like to tell you, boys, for I thought you’d laugh at me; but I think, you know, he’s taken a sort of shine to us since he dropped in last night. And I fancy, you see, he’s sort of hanging round to see that we get along all right. I’d have pointed him out before only I reckoned you and Stacy would say he was making up to us for our money.”
“And we’d have been wrong, Barker boy,” said Stacy, with a heartiness that surprised Demorest, “for I reckon your instinct’s the right one.”
“There he is now,” said the gratified Barker, “just abreast of us on the cut-off. He started just after we did, and he’s got a horse that could have brought him into Boomville hours ago. It’s just his kindness.”
He pointed to a distant fringe of buckeye from which Jack Hamlin had just emerged. Although evidently holding in a powerful mustang, nothing could be more unconscious and utterly indifferent than his attitude. He did not seem to know of the proximity of any other traveler, and to care less. His handsome head was slightly thrown back, as if he was caroling after his usual fashion, but the distance was too great to make his melody audible to them, or to allow Barker’s shout of invitation to reach him. Suddenly he lowered his tightened rein, the mustang sprang forward, and with a flash of silver spurs and bridle fripperies he had disappeared. But as the trail he was pursuing crossed theirs a mile beyond, it seemed quite possible that they should again meet him.
They were now fairly into the Boomville valley, and were entering a narrow arroyo bordered with dusky willows which effectually excluded the view on either side. It was the bed of a mountain torrent that in winter descended the hillside over the trail by which they had just come, but was now sunk into the thirsty plain between banks that varied from two to five feet in height. The muleteer had advanced into the narrow channel when he suddenly cast a hurried glance behind him, uttered a “Madre de Dios!” and backed his mule and his precious freight against the bank. The sound of hoofs on the trail in their rear had caught his quicker ear, and as the three partners turned they beheld three horsemen thundering down the hill towards them. They were apparently Mexican vaqueros of the usual common swarthy type, their faces made still darker by the black silk handkerchief tied round their heads under their stiff sombreros. Either they were unable or unwilling to restrain their horses in their headlong speed, and a collision in that narrow passage was imminent, but suddenly, before reaching its entrance, they diverged with a volley of oaths, and dashing along the left bank of the arroyo, disappeared in the intervening willows. Divided between relief at their escape and indignation at what seemed to be a drunken, feast-day freak of these roystering vaqueros, the little party re-formed, when a cry from Barker arrested them. He had just perceived a horseman motionless in the arroyo who, although unnoticed by them, had evidently been seen by the Mexicans. He had apparently leaped into it from the bank, and had halted as if to witness this singular incident. As the clatter of the vaqueros’ hoofs died away he lightly leaped the bank again and disappeared. But in that single glimpse of him they recognized Jack Hamlin. When they reached the spot where he had halted, they could see that he must have approached it from the trail where they had previously seen him, but which they now found crossed it at right angles. Barker was right. He had really kept them at easy distance the whole length of the journey.
But they were now reaching its end. When they issued at last from the arroyo they came upon the outskirts of Boomville and the great stage-road. Indeed, the six horses of the Pioneer coach were just panting along the last half mile of the steep upgrade as they approached. They halted mechanically as the heavy vehicle swayed and creaked by them. In their ordinary working dress, sunburnt with exposure, covered with dust, and carrying their rifles still in their hands, they, perhaps, presented a sufficiently characteristic appearance to draw a few faces—some of them pretty and intelligent—to the windows of the coach as it passed. The sensitive Barker was quickest to feel that resentment with which the Pioneer usually met the wide-eyed criticism of the Eastern tourist or “greenhorn,” and reddened under the bold scrutiny of a pair of black inquisitive eyes behind an eyeglass. That annoyance was communicated, though in a lesser degree, even to the bearded Demorest and Stacy. It was an unexpected contact with that great world in which they were so soon to enter. They felt ashamed of their appearance, and yet ashamed of that feeling. They felt a secret satisfaction when Barker said, “They’d open their eyes wider if they knew what was in that pack-saddle,” and yet they corrected him for what they were pleased to call his “snobbishness.” They hurried a little faster as the road became more frequented, as if eager to shorten their distance to clean clothes and civilization.
Only Demorest began to linger in the rear. This contact with the stagecoach had again brought him face to face with his buried past. He felt his old dream revive, and occasionally turned to look back upon the dark outlines of Black Spur, under whose shadow it had returned so often, and wondered if he had left it there forever, and it were now slowly exhaling with the thinned and dying smoke of their burning cabin.
His companions, knowing his silent moods, had preceded him at some distance, when he heard the soft sound of ambling hoofs on the thick dust, and suddenly the light touch of Jack Hamlin’s gauntlet on his shoulder. The mustang Jack bestrode was reeking with grime and sweat, but Jack himself
