Читать книгу The Lost Cabin Mine - Frederick Niven - Страница 11

Table of Contents

fter breakfast on the day following the incident of the verandah I was journeying down town to post two letters, the Lost Cabin Mine still uppermost in my mind, when I came, at the turning into Baker Street, face to face with the man Donoghue. It was clear that he saw me,—he could not help seeing me, so directly were we meeting,—and I wondered if now he would have a word to say to me regarding the part I played on the preceding evening. Sure enough, he stopped; but there was only friendliness on his face and the heaviness of it and the sulkiness were hardly visible when he smiled.

He held out his hand to me with evident sincerity, and said that he had to thank me for preventing what he called "an accident last night."

I smiled at the word, for he spoke it so easily, as though the whole thing were a mere bagatelle to him. "It was right stupid of me," he said. "But Laughlin keeps such bad liquor! Canlan, too, had had too much of it, or he would never have tried to irritate me with his remark." I was trying to recollect the exact words of that remark which Donoghue classified as "irritating" when he interrupted my thoughts with: "The Apache Kid and me has quit the Laughlin House."

"Yes, I did n't see you at breakfast there," said I.

"Was Canlan there?" he asked eagerly.

"Not while I was breakfasting, at any rate," I replied.

He nursed his chin in his hand at that and stood pondering something. Then: "Quite so, quite so," he commented as though to himself. Then to me: "By the way, would you be so kind as to come down this evening to Blaine's? The Apache Kid asked me to try and see you and ask you if you would be good enough to come down."

"Blaine's?" I asked. "Where is Blaine's?"

"Blaine, Blaine, Lincoln Avenue; near the corner of Twenty-second Street."

It amazed me to hear of a Twenty-second Street in this city that boasted only one long street (Baker Street) and six streets running off it. But of course, a street is a street in a new city even though it can boast only of a house at either corner and has nothing between these corner houses but tree-stumps, or sand, or sage-bushes, and little boards thrust into the ground announcing: "This is a sure-thing lot. Its day will come very soon. See about it when it can be bought cheap from ——, Real Estate Agent, office open day and night."

But Donoghue, seeing that I did not know the streets of the city by name, directed me:

"You go right along Baker Street,—you know it, of course, the main street of this progressive burgh?—straight ahead west; turn down third on the right; look up at the store front there and you read 'H.B. Blaine. Makes you think o' Home and Mother.' It's a coffee-joint, you see. There 's a coffee urn in the window and two plates, one with crackers on it and t' other with doughnuts. You walk right in and ask for the Apache Kid—straight goods—no josh." He stopped to give emphasis to the rest and after that pause he said in a meaning tone: "And—you—will—hear—o' something to your advantage."

He nodded sedately and, without giving me time to say anything in reply, moved off. You may be sure I pondered this invitation as I went along roaring Baker Street to the post-office. And I was indeed in two minds about it, uncertain whether to call in at Blaine's or not. Both the sheriff and Mrs. Laughlin had cautioned me against these men, and I had, besides, seen enough of them to know myself that they were not just all that could be desired. The word the sheriff had used regarding Apache Kid's nature, "deep," came into my mind, along with reflections on all his prevarications of the previous day. It occurred to me that it would be quite in keeping with him to pretend gratefulness to me, at the moment, for my interference, and to post up Donoghue to do the same, with the intention in his mind all the while of "getting me in a quiet corner," as the phrase is. I think I may be excused this judgment considering all the duplicity I had already seen him practise. A story that I had heard somewhere of a trap-door in a floor which opened and precipitated whoever stood upon it down into a hole among rats came into my head. Perhaps H. B. Blaine had such a trap-door in his floor. One could believe anything of half the men one saw here, with their blood-shot eyes, straggling hair, and cruel mouths. Still, I had felt real friendliness, no counterfeit, in both Apache Kid last night and Donoghue to-day.

A wave of disgust at my cowardice and suspicion came over me to aid me toward the decision that my curiosity was already crying for and so, when the day wore near an end, I set forth—for Blaine's, the "coffee-joint."

When I got the length of Baker Street I was to see another sight such as only the West could show. The phonographs, as usual, it being now evening, were all grumbling forth their rival songs at the stalls and open windows. The wonted din was in the air when suddenly an eddy began in the crowd on the opposite sidewalk. It was in front of one of the "toughest" saloons in town, and out of that eddy darted a man, hatless, and broke away pell-mell along the street. Next moment the saloon door swung again, and after him there went running another fellow, with a tomahawk in his hand, his hair flying behind him as he ran, his legs straddled wide to prevent him tripping up on his great spurs. Where the third party in this scene sprang from I cannot tell. I only know that he suddenly appeared on the street, habited in a blue serge suit, with a Stars-and-Stripes kerchief round his slouch hat in place of a band, and a silver star on his breast. It was my friend the portly, fatherly, stern sheriff.

"Stop, you!" he cried.

But he with the tomahawk paid no heed, and out shot the sheriff's leg and tripped the man up. The tomahawk flew from his hand and buried itself almost to the end of the handle in the dust of the road.

"Stop, you!" cried the sheriff again to the other fellow, who was still posting on. But the fugitive gave only a quick glance over his shoulder and accelerated his speed. It looked as though he would escape, when down flew the sheriff's hand to his belt, then up above his head. He thrust out his chin vindictively, down came his revolver hand in a half-circle and—it was just as though he pointed at the flying man with his weapon—"flash!" The man took one step more, but not a second. His leg was shot, and he fell. A waggon had stopped on the roadway, the teamster looking on, and him the sheriff immediately pressed into service. The man of the tomahawk rose, and, at a word from the man of law-and-order, climbed into the waggon; he of the shot leg was assisted to follow; the sheriff mounted beside them, and with a brief word to the teamster away went the waggon in a cloud of dust, and whirled round the corner to the court-house. And then the crowd in the street moved on as usual, the talk buzzed, the cigar smoke crept overhead.

"Would n't that jar you?" said a voice in my ear, and turning I found Donoghue by my side. "Just toddling down to Blaine's?"

"Yes," I said, and fell in step with him.

Certainly this little incident I had witnessed on the way reassured me to the extent of making me think that if I was to be shot in the "coffee-joint," there was a lively sheriff in the town, and unless my demise was kept unconscionably quiet he would be by the way of making inquiries.

With no trepidation at all, then, on reading the sign "H. B. Blaine. Makes you think of Home and Mother," I followed Donoghue into the sweet-scented "joint" with the gleaming coffee urn in the window.

He nodded to the gentleman who stood behind the doughnut-heaped counter—H. B. Blaine, I presumed—who jerked his head towards the rear of the establishment.

"Step right in, Mr. Donoghue," he said. "Apache Kid is settin' there."