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"What is this all?" the gold grabber demanded, sitting up, still half dazed and wholly incredulous, and speaking Spanish, as one in dire straits always uses the mother tongue.
"Talk English," responded the other, returning rapidly and recharging his double-barrelled gun, according to hunters' rules, never to carry unloaded firearms in a dangerous country. "And don't talk to me of the courage of the grizzly any more. Are you alive? I mean, are you not wounded?"
"I am not sure how I am," returned the chief of the gold seekers, standing with difficulty, and staring at his rescuer.
It was Ranald Dearborn, clad as a regular hunter; but his face was not burnt and weather beaten yet, like a veteran's, and he had an elegant and almost dandified air, which his recent conduct belied.
He laughed as the captain brushed himself down, and "tried" all his joints, doubtingly.
"Where are the bears?" inquired Kidd, anxiously.
"I drove them into a crack that probably leads to their lair. They shed my shot and my bullet off like rain from a roof; but we may be more lucky in another attack. Shall we have a turn at them?"
"Thank you very much, but I have had all I want of such diversion. Why, when they reared, it was like looking up the side of a church! I am sure their teeth were as long as a hunting knife. Who and what are you, stranger?"
"A hunter – an Englishman wintering in Canada and hereabouts – came out to this New World to see some sport."
"Alone!" cried Kidd, in the tone of one addressing a madman. "Stop, though, I have heard – though I never believed it – that solitary hunters of your nationality do come here with the notion that buffalo are merely wild bullocks, the puma a large edition of the domestic cat, and grizzly himself, a rough badger puffed into balloon size by pinyon fruit. I say, friend," he went on, nervously glancing about, "kindly lend me your arm as far as my encampment. I am in force here, and promise you good entertainment. Not a man of my band but will welcome the preserver of their leader. I owe my life to you doubly; you must not go away till I shall have acquitted myself of the debt."
"Nonsense! It's all in the day's sport. You would do as much for me, if it had been the other way about."
"I doubt it – I draw the line at grizzly. But you know that such a service obliges the doer as much as the receiver. Come along."
"I tell you, I am used to camp down anywhere I feel sleepy. I have no fear of rheumatism," returned the young man, gaily.
"I beg you to accompany me to my camp, for I am quite lame, and spend at least a night there."
"Do you insist upon that?" inquired Dearborn, with a singular expression.
"Certainly; we must drink to our better acquaintance;" dragging him feverishly along.
"Have your own way."
"You Englishmen are all as rich as you are eccentric, but no man can be too rich. I may be able to relieve myself of some of my obligation yet."
"Not a word of that! As for accompanying you to your camp, please to observe that you entreated me to do so."
"I'd force you if I could."
"This is a queer world, and in this wilderness passions rule unconstrained. Friends overnight shoot at one another at sight at noon of the morrow! If we ever fall out, mind, you must not blame me, since I wanted to be left alone, as I came."
"What trash! You are joking in that dry way which we Spanish well understand. You have saved my life."
"It looks so, does it not? Still, I should feel more certain on that point, and rate myself more of a hero if we had those bearskins – one apiece!"
"I'll send twenty men to track them to the death, and you shall have both. But come on."
Leaning upon the stranger's arm in an affectionate manner, Captain Kidd pressed on as nimbly as his shattered nerves and really crippled state permitted. Not one look behind did he give, and yet, had he been able to see the other side of the rising ground, over which Ranald had driven the terrified bruins, he would have been given food for reflection.
In fact, sitting on their tails, without their heads, which they held in their paws, the bears were laughing with supplementary inner mouths belonging to quite human countenances. These bore a strong resemblance to those of Cherokee Bill and Jim Ridge. They, of few men, had the necessary knowledge of grizzly's fife and demeanour to play the part which had completely deceived Captain Kidd, and would have succeeded with a more skilled hunter. Presently the two disrobed themselves, flung away the osier rods which had swelled out the skins, packed the latter up, and winked drolly at one another.
"I say, Bill, mind you see the editor of the Rocky Mountain Squelcher," observed the old trapper, humorously, "and insert the item that Mr. R. Dearborn was introduced to Captain Kidd by Mr. and Mrs. G. Bear!"
CHAPTER XVI
THE THORN OF ROSES
It was going on seven o'clock when the unhappy Captain of the gold seekers and his deliverer, as he emphatically termed him, reached the former's camp.
The weather kept cold, and the frost was biting. The cloudless sky of a clear night was lavishly sprinkled with the brightest stars.
Lieutenant Carcajieu was on the point of sending out some scouts to find the captain and missing men as he reappeared. He was warmly greeted. Not that his fellows doated upon him; but, being like seamen navigating an unknown sea, they would have been in a quandary if he had eloped. After thanking them, the leader gave an account of his adventure, upon which the congratulations broke forth afresh for one who had escaped two grizzlies. Three or four men, as they were fully equipped, were directed to go out and bring in the remains of the English convict.
"By the way, where's the Frenchman?" enquired Kidd, though desirous of repose.
"Paul has not returned," responded the lieutenant, to his surprise. "Though it's blamed late for scrambling round in the district overflowing with b'ar."
"I hope nothing's befallen him," observed Kidd, gravely. "Double the force of scouts, and let them move most warily."
Leaving Joe to govern the camp, and seeking the recuperation of which he felt in need, the captain and Dearborn proceeded towards the tent. Wearied, aching, and meditative, Kidd did not remark a quick peculiar sign of "friend!" from the young hunter to his right-hand man. A plate additional was set for Dearborn, and the captain plied a good knife and fork. Soon he gave the Negro Samson an order. In five minutes its purport was made manifest, for the black man ushered in under the canvas flap, Doña Rosario. She came forward in a singularly embarrassed way, a feverish blush on her face, and her eyes curiously enkindled. She seemed struggling between interest in the stranger and a resolve not to exhibit it.
This caution was so quickly mastered, that it was invisible by the time she had taken a seat prepared for her between the two men. Dearborn had gazed at her with no other sentiment than admiration, unless, also, some pity was involuntarily betrayed.
Ordinarily Captain Kidd let no incident escape him; but he was too bruised and too famished not to be exceedingly self-concentrated. Happily for them, therefore, nothing met his eye.
"I must ask your forgiveness, Niña," he said in Spanish, in a voice which he tried to soften, "I ought to have notified you of a stranger guest."
"As the ruler, sir, you can do just as you please," she returned, with indifference.
"Nay, nay, my sweet! I don't want the gentleman to have a poor opinion of me, and suppose I act tyrannically over you."
"I beg pardon, Mr. Kidd," interrupted Dearborn, playing carelessly with his knife, "as everybody has his hands full in minding his own business, I make it a rule never to go out of my way supposing things. At the same time, this foreign language before a guest is not what I was educated to call the correct etiquette. Besides, if you must discuss family matters with this young lady, whom I take to be your daughter, would it not be better to put that by till we are through the meal?"
"Oh, I thought you knew Spanish," returned the captain, smoothly. "The lady is not my daughter, but my ward – a far-removed relative – but I love her as if she were my own child; and there is nothing that depends on me that should not be hers to satisfy her in any way."
The girl smiled mockingly. The captain never moved a muscle as he went on thus:
"I was merely observing, my pet —querida Niña– that I never should have invited a complete stranger hither – one I have only known a few hours – to be our guest but for his having rendered me one of those services utterly unpayable. In plain English, he has saved my life."
"Delighted to hear it," rejoined the young lady, nibbling at the sweet biscuit.
"It is only too true," took up the hunter, laughing, "that, without any vaunt, my interpolation in your trialogue with the grizzly bears alone prevented the last repartee being rather fatal than otherwise to you."
"Ugh! The bare idea makes me shudder!" said the captain, with no intention to jest. "I am gooseflesh all over now!"
"Did this gentleman really save you from the monsters?" queried she, apparently at length interested in the conversation.
"Save is the word!" ejaculated the bandit chief. "I was under the very claws, between the teeth of the horrible beasts. So shake again, Mr. Dearborn," he added, with a fine tragi-comic offering of his hand. "We are brothers right on till death do us part! I am not much given to speechifying, but I have a rare memory for good and evil deeds done me, and as I live, you may ask anything of mine, and halves we go in it, though 'tis my gold placer in the – well yonder!"
"Mind, I'm booking that offer, captain." said the young man, with an Englishman's hearty joviality; "I am not a man to forget easily, either, and I am a great fellow for taking people at their word. So, though I am for claiming nothing just now, do you see, I should not wonder if someday I remind you of your pledge. So hold yourself ready to meet the demand, and cash up."
"There is no reminder needed in my case," said the captain, rather coldly and proudly. "You will find me ready to act up to my pledges."
"Therefore, I shall not dwell on that point. Let us change the subject. You were laughing at me as a foolhardy son of fortune who renounces old country luxuries, and penetrates the American wilderness, quite by himself," he said with a stress meant for the auditress to mark the phrase; "but what the plague brings you into desolation? You have not the look of a merchant. You would not haggle and bicker with Messrs. Lo & Co., as the Yankees playfully call the noble son of the forest."
"Quite so, I am not here to trade. Oh, dear, no! I am just jogging along."
"But whither? I do not want to be rude; but where there are no roads, I should imagine one's route led nowhere."
"The proof that your inquiry is not impertinent is shown in my freely answering you. My course is public property. On the border, everyone knows that my mates and I are going to the gold fields."
"Oh, after gold," repeated the other with well-feigned surprise. "Over the range into California? In that case, if there's any reliance in maps – though when maps are made by geographers at a desk ten thousand miles off, I have not too much faith in maps myself – well, you are askew! Granting you the finding of a pass in the Rockies, you will be three weeks reaching the eastern slope of the Nevada Range, and if you go that way and can climb the Oregonian Heights, you will be three months getting down to Portland. Either way, you will have so heavy and fatiguing a 'jog,' that I wonder very much that you take a delicate young lady with you."
"What you say may be very true, sir; but, to begin with, do not run away with the wrong notion. This young lady would not be in my company – I may better say, one of my company – if it were not absolutely her wish and will."
"Oh, now I curl back into my shell," said the Englishman, with a sardonic smile, "I cannot say I am amazed at the fair young lady's determination. Your American girls have already a name in Europe for daring, devotion, constancy, and – caprices."
"I beg your pardon, sir," broke in the young lady, looking at him fixedly, "for intervening in your conversation unbesought, but you should be fully informed on one point, Mr. Dearborn – I believe you are so named – "
"Ranald Dearborn, at your service."
"Well, Mr. Ranald Dearborn, I do not deserve your eulogy in any measure. Captain Kidd lies, and very well knows that he lies, when he asserts that I wish to accompany him in his journey. I am here, in his company – as he puts it – in spite of myself, against my will, because I have been shamefully torn from all the semblance of home that I had, and dragged thence I know not whither. I am no relative of his, not his ward, but his slave!"
"Señorita!" began the captain violently, on recovering his tongue.
"Do you dare deny it!" she cried, energetically, looking him in the eyes. "It is high time the truth came out! And that everybody knew of what you are capable, and what my position is! I thank Heaven you have at last brought a stranger to my hearing, not your hangdog confederates. Too well, señor, you relied on my scorn and acquiescence when you had the impudence to utter those words. I will not allow my weakness to bring me in as your accomplice, Mr. Dearborn," she continued, turning abruptly to the hunter, "this man has lied; he has cowardly abducted me for reasons unknown, and he intends to leave my dead body so far from civilization that it will never rise in judgment of this world against him."
"Have a care, young lady," said the captain, moodily, "I can't let you run on too far in this style – "
"One moment, captain," broke in Dearborn, sternly, "questions are raised which do not come into my province. But I am obliged to observe that you – or anybody else – has got to behave like a gentleman when a lady is present – "
"But, sir, if – "
"I know no ifs or buts, sir, for none but a coward and a blackguard would threaten a defenceless woman. You brought her here as the ornament to the supper table, so it's your own fault. I warn you once for all that, before me, you will have to treat the young lady with all the respect due to her age and sex, or else we shall have to settle the punctilio of etiquette with pistol or knife! And I doubt if you will be lucky enough to have anyone burst in between you and me as I did between you and the grizzlies."
"Good gracious, sir," the captain hastened to reply, the last turn of the defiant speech making him cease to bite his lips till the blood ran, "I am very sorry this awkward incident occurred – very! Nothing of the kind did ever take place; and I shall take the greatest heed it does not repeat itself," he went on, with a look of evil augury aside at the girl, who was wringing her hands and tapping the ground with her feet. "I allow that I let myself ramble farther than I ought. To show you how much I regret having displeased the young lady, I beg her to overlook the offence, and bear me no grudge."
Rosa tossed her head disdainfully.
"That's more like," said the English hunter, lightly; "since you apologise, I haven't a word to say."
"Yes; I am thoroughly vexed. Let us drop the hot but dying coals of dissention, therefore, and – what were we talking about when they flew out of the fire?"
"I don't know now."
"Oh, señor, you were observing that it looked as if my present route for the goldfields would bring me out in the Sacramento Valley, or at Vancouver's. Are you sure?"
"Well, I am no resident; but, coming down from the North, few signs of gold bearing tracts met my humble vision."
"Did you come through the Yellowstone Basin?" inquired the captain.
"What the Canadians called the 'Infernal Regions,' and the trappers the 'Fireholes?' Well, not what you can call through. I did – as I do when a big band of Indians cross my trail – I skirted it. They say it is the devil's own home on earth; and I have no wish, prematurely, to soak in a sulphur bath!"
"Mr. Dearborn, are you the man to render me still a further service?"
"I want to know, you know," said the Englishman, humorously.
"¡Diablo! You are in no hurry to contract yourself into a bargain, señor;" commented Mr. Kidd, with a bitter grin.
"Being a foreigner – "
"It's prudent. I wish I had always been as slow to plunge at your age! Tell me, where were you going when we met?"
"Southerly: I came to hunt. But the presence of Indians makes me fear that a solitary man would be hunted here."
"If you have no disinclination to remain with a force around you at which no Indian lances will tilt," said Captain Kidd, proudly, "I can offer you something – a way to utilise your recently gained knowledge in skirting the Yellowstone Basin; guide us inside it!"
"Why, what the – "
"Gold! That's the 'the!'"
"Gold there?"
The prairie rover leaned forward, resting both elbows on the board, and fixing his glowing eyes on the Englishman, spoke earnestly as follows.
CHAPTER XVII
HOW "FRENCH PAUL" GOT HURT
"I am quite sure," said Kidd, "that the stories told to frighten outsiders from the district, which lies there away, are invented by the reds and by the few whites who have explored it, for the same end – to keep its metallic treasures, perchance those of precious stones; besides, here we shall perish in the storms. That horrid one nearly laid us out stiff; I want to escape them. Within that charmed valley volcanoes maintain the temperature of spring; grass is eternal for cattle; the unfrozen ground can be broken up; the water always runs for gold washing! I say, guide us into that natural garden; and in two weeks, should no gold be found, you can depart. You shall name your terms; and, with the goods and dollars, go your way. If we find gold, you shall have your lot as a member of the band – reduced by losses, so that the shares are not unreasonably many – as guide, and as the leader's partner!"
"You are very frank. You do not understand that an English gentleman does not let money influence him – "
"Bah, bah! An hidalgo, ay, a grandee of old Spain goes gold hunting and never dreams of a reproach to his blue blood, for the royal metal ennobles its seekers. That apart, if you are here for adventure, I foresee that you will have no lack of that – more mustard than beef!"
"Allow me another remark: whatever my taste as regards money, there is one thing I love more – my freedom."
"Great heavens! Then I am putting you in the place to be the freest in the band. What a pilot is at sea, a guide is to a hunters' band. The captain himself has to submit to many things onerous, which the guide escapes. He gives no one an account of his doings when he has been absent; he leaves at any hour and stays as long as he likes – the band must await him or go on to the rendezvous which he arranged. You cry 'halt!' when you are tired, or hungry, or athirst, and we halt under the tree you point out. Freedom? If I were not the captain, I'd rather be the guide, upon my honour!"
"If that is how a guide can act," remarked Dearborn, as if wavering, "I don't mind agreeing. It is fully understood that I accept out of kindness, and because, having saved your life, I wish to complete the work, and not leave you to be overwhelmed by a blizzard on the very threshold of the Enchanted Valley, as you esteem it!"
The captain joined in the laugh.
"More frankness," he proceeded. "My men are rough rogues, not worth the loop that will finish them, and I shall be the happier with a genuine gentleman the more at my side. Whatever your conditions, I gladly will pay them. Is it settled?"
"You shall be shown the Yellowstone Hole as if I were opening a drawing room door, captain."
"When may we start?"
"Tomorrow, sunrise."
"That will be capital, for I expect a little reinforcement to come in."
"Then I shall give the word to start and go when I see you at dawn," observed the hunter, taking up his rifle as he rose.
"Do you mean you are going so untimely?"
"Yes. Look here, I haven't asked a question about the reinforcement you mention, though that interests the guide. So don't you put any to me," returned Dearborn, ironically.
"Quite right. But whilst you may keep back what you please from the chief, he must confide everything in the head scout. I am adding some women and children to the band. They will weaken us, but be a tower of strength by and bye. I can say no more at present."
"You need not have said so much."
"When you see them you will see all the women – that is, except a companion of my dear niece – a Scotch lady, who came to our camp for refuge from the Indians who destroyed her party."
"A regular 'squaw' band," remarked the Englishman, naturally enough contemptuous if he had already imbibed the hunter's sentiments.
The captain approved with a smile, but Doña Rosario seemed to frown, though she appreciated properly the sincerity of the speaker's raillery.
"Good hunting till tomorrow," said the bandit, seeing his friend and partner clear to the outpost, and announcing his status on the way to all comers.
Without waiting for the captain's return, Rosario returned to her nook in the rock.
"Good news, Ulla!" she exclaimed to the other girl, who was in some anxiety. "I have had a perfect outbreak with our tyrant, but I have seen your brave friend. What daring to walk into the camp among so many villains! I declare I am quite proud of him myself, and you may well be jealous till I have some idol of my own. Cheer up! Happiness is beginning to smile on us!"
The leader returned slowly to the tent. On the way he met the Carcajieu, who was walking up and down sulkily as if he disapproved of the new addition to the party, and the quasi-superiority accorded him.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing new yet!" was the grumbling reply.
"None of the scouts come in?"
"Part have, bringing what is left of Sydney Dick in two pieces. The Injins have been playing high old pranks with him, hide and head! And the rest are probing the snowdrifts for the Frenchman. It will be a windfall for us that blew him into fifty feet of never-melting snows!"
"You don't seem to waste any affection on him!"
"It's a liar who'd say so."
"I love him no better. His treacherous face imported good to no one. But we are in no such luck to be rid of him, too."
In taking "the last squint" around, they saw pitch pine knot torches flashing on the plain.
"What did I say? The boys have found him, you be sure."
Retracing their steps to the pickets, they found the torches coming on as slowly as in a funeral procession.
"One can never tell," observed Joe; "maybe they've had a brush with the Injins."
"Not in the dark, lieutenant. Besides, those red devils must be still stiff with the freezing. It's those confounded bears, wild at having been robbed of me."
It was quite half an hour before the solemnly silent watch brought the torches near enough for their light, falling on the scouts, to reveal that they carried on a handbarrow of pine poles a figure vaguely resembling a man's.
"Have you found the Frenchman?"
"Yes, captain, but in damaged condition!"
"Do you mean to say he is hurt?"
"Have a little patience – or lend a hand, if you are in such a hurry!" cried the men.
They laid their burden down tenderly enough by a watch fire.
"A little more gently, burn your bones!" groaned Lottery Paul, throwing off the buffalo robe coats and blankets kindly laid over him; "Don't you want to leave me one whole bone among 'em."
"What's come to you, friend?" queried the captain.
"A stupid question; better ask who came at me? – I can reply to that, after a fashion."
"Thunder! My poor boy, your accident seems to have soured your usually sweet temper."
"Oh, you call that an accident, do you, old man? Much obliged for an explanation of your notion of an accident. What's your name for the fire of a battery of nine-pounders and a charge of dragoons?"
"Why don't you speak out! Tell us, or go to death your own way – if we can't do any good to you."
"I know you can. Hand over the whisky!"
"You ass! That would be a gulp of 'sudden death' in fact."
"More nonsense! How do you know what state I am in before I tell you? I am dying of thirst, that's just what ails me – so pass along the bottle, or I'll speak nothing."
"Give it him, and let him choke himself," said Kidd, enraged at the obstinacy.
Paul snatched the bottle and drank a long draught, his laugh mingling with the gurgling.
"Whoop!" cried he, dropping the nearly emptied flask with a grin of content. "I feel better already. A poor idea you have of a scout's outfit, to send that cahoot out without a drink in the herd!"
"Will you talk up now, you brute?"
"Orders received for a Fourth of July oration!"
"Well, where are you hurt, to begin with?"
"All over – a bullet through the right arm, another grazed my ribs, the small of my back caught a rap from the butt end of a rifle, and I offer a complete collection of scratches and bruises from a drop into a snow pit, where a fire had melted it twenty feet – "
"My fire," ejaculated the captain.
"Oh, have I to thank you for that trick! My spirit must be pretty tightly boxed up in my body, after all, not to have been bounced out. However, it looks as if I should get round after a bit, and then somebody will ask who exploded a giant cartridge next door to his blanket."
"Who?"
"The man that served me so. Do you fancy I have been taking myself by the throat and levelling the snow with me!"
"If you go on with such a rigmarole, we shall understand very little."
"That's so, captain. To put it short – you sent me out on the scout. That's admitted? – Good. I spread myself to no purpose; not a trace on the snow where even a witch wolf must have left some print. It got to be after sun darkening, and my wolfish gnawing under my belt set me campwards, a little careless I am afraid, for somebody heard me, and I heard a nasty threatening voice challenge me with a 'Who goes there?'"
"'Twas a man," cried Captain Kidd.
"Unless the prairie dogs talk English," rejoined the Parisian, laughing through a grimace of pain. "'It's a friend,' I answered, getting my gun round to have first shot. 'Where from?' Here was a chance to get in some big lie; but I thought a white man would be best bumped off by a boast of our turnout. 'From the Montana Gold hunters! We're two hundred strong, not twenty miles yonder.' 'I am no friend of scoundrels of your kidney,' said this particular fellow. It looks as if he knew all about us. 'Pull up and pull out while your scalp is on!' 'How long since you staked out this territory,' said I, catching a glimpse of the muzzle of his piece. 'I am not going to quit till you show me your papers,' and I pulled the trigger. But the worst of it is, that when I could spy his gun, he saw mine, and we fired together, with the shade of preference to the stranger. That's about while I felt the ball through my arm, and my gun had to drop. I had it up quick in my other hand, and leaped on the shooter. But another bullet came on me in the side, from the flash, and I was stretched on my back instantly. That fellow rushed right up to me, and held me down with his foot till I had received this speech: 'You have your dose. The others will now get theirs; and, if it is a little slow coming, it will be kept hot!'"
"The man said that?" cried Kidd.
"Clearly. That made me suppose, cap'n, that some of your acquaintances are hovering round, and will stir you up yet."
"Go on," muttered the bandit chief, frowning, and becoming thoughtful.
"So did he – go on! I tried to get out my knife to learn how thick his leggins were, when he turned me over and set to kicking me as if he was bound to wear his boots out in the shortest possible time. I was rolled over and over like a log towards the river, and he yelling out the most abusive language. 'Take that, thief! And that, pícaro! And that, voleur de trappes! And that, assassin!' There were enough and to spare for ten apiece to all you rascals in the camp, captain included! Luckily, in his blind fury, he kicked me over the ends of some burnt logs, and down I fell into the pit which that fire of your'n had melted. I thought it was an Injin b'ar trap when I came to my senses, and I climbed out mighty rapid for fear either b'ar or Injin would drop in on me. Somehow I crawled in the proper direction, afeared to raise a woo-oo for Dick; and at last the boys hit upon me. Good boys, though I have swore some at 'em. They deserve their quenchers, and, old man, I'll take the balance in that flask."
He was given more drink; spirits is the panacea of such men.
"So," said Kidd, "you were unable to fulfil my charge, and have brought back no information beyond this attack on you?"
"I saw nobody but that one man. If he who sent the second shot had joined in that 'booting,' the boys would have only picked up a pancake."
"This is painfully strange!"
"Oh, I think it strangely painful!"
"What kind of man was your assailant?"
"That's the puzzle," replied the railing Parisian. "By the voice, a white man. But I did not see him. It was so dark, and he was on me like a tiger! And then he kept me rolling over and over, so that I had not one fair peep at his nose. I shall only know him again by the length of his foot and the tone of his voice."
"If that's all, bah! – We'll take care of him, mates."
After the excitement of his telling the misadventure, French Paul was dull and lifeless; then he raved with pain, for he had not a dollar's breadth of his body without a bruise. Yet he bore the dressing and anointing with crude kerosene oil and snake juice with fortitude. Next begging a drink, and "freezing" to the bottle, he went to sleep drunk. His last words were: "Don't you fret, boys – any of you that I owe money to. I shall come up smiling; for him that's borned to be hanged won't be kicked to death no how."
Meanwhile Captain Kidd strayed into his tent very thoughtfully after having enjoined Corky Joe to exercise the utmost vigilance.
For years upon years this desperado had struggled against society, and sported with all laws and regulations; but now he saw the horizon circle in upon him. He could not drive away the foreboding that the hour of a terrible punishment was approaching. All night long he walked up and down in the tent, revolving the most fantastic projects. A few minutes before sunrise, a man coughed at the tent opening in that warning way customary where men sleep with weapons in the hand, and might, if abruptly awakened, put a bullet mechanically in the innocent arouser. The cloth was lifted and a man appeared, whom Captain Kidd greeted with joy.
