well; you’ve worked enough for to-day; go down to my cabin and eat what
you want, and rest. It’s just an accident, you know, on account of my
being excited.”
“It scared me,” said the lad, as he started away; “but I learnt
something, so I don’t mind it.”
“Damned easy to please!” muttered Buckner, following him with his eye.
I wonder if he’ll tell? Mightn’t he?… I wish it had killed him.”
The boy took no advantage of his holiday in the matter of resting; he
employed it in work, eager and feverish and happy work. A thick growth
of chaparral extended down the mountainside clear to Flint’s cabin; the
most of Fetlock’s labor was done in the dark intricacies of that stubborn
growth; the rest of it was done in his own shanty. At last all was
complete, and he said:
“If he’s got any suspicions that I’m going to tell on him, he won’t keep
them long, to-morrow. He will see that I am the same milksop as I always
was–all day and the next. And the day after to-morrow night there ‘ll
be an end of him; nobody will ever guess who finished him up nor how it
was done. He dropped me the idea his own self, and that’s odd.”
V
The next day came and went.
It is now almost midnight, and in five minutes the new morning will
begin. The scene is in the tavern billiard-room. Rough men in rough
clothing, slouch-hats, breeches stuffed into boot-tops, some with vests,
none with coats, are grouped about the boiler-iron stove, which has ruddy
cheeks and is distributing a grateful warmth; the billiard-balls are
clacking; there is no other sound–that is, within; the wind is fitfully
moaning without. The men look bored; also expectant. A hulking broad-
shouldered miner, of middle age, with grizzled whiskers, and an
unfriendly eye set in an unsociable face, rises, slips a coil of fuse
upon his arm, gathers up some other personal properties, and departs
without word or greeting to anybody. It is Flint Buckner. As the door
closes behind him a buzz of talk breaks out.
“The regularest man that ever was,” said Jake Parker, the blacksmith:
“you can tell when it’s twelve just by him leaving, without looking at
your Waterbury.”
“And it’s the only virtue he’s got, as fur as I know,” said Peter Hawes,
miner.
“He’s just a blight on this society,” said Wells-Fargo’s man, Ferguson.
“If I was running this shop I’d make him say something, some time or
other, or vamos the ranch.” This with a suggestive glance at the
barkeeper, who did not choose to see it, since the man under discussion
was a good customer, and went home pretty well set up, every night, with
refreshments furnished from the bar.
“Say,” said Ham Sandwich, miner, “does any of you boys ever recollect of
him asking you to take a drink?”
“Him? Flint Buckner? Oh, Laura!”
This sarcastic rejoinder came in a spontaneous general outburst in one
form of words or another from the crowd. After a brief silence, Pat
Riley, miner, said:
“He’s the 15-puzzle, that cuss. And his boy’s another one. I can’t make
them out.”
“Nor anybody else,” said Ham Sandwich; “and if they are 15-puzzles how
are you going to rank up that other one? When it comes to A 1 right-down
solid mysteriousness, he lays over both of them. Easy–don’t he?”
“You bet!”
Everybody said it. Every man but one. He was the new-comer–Peterson.
He ordered the drinks all round, and asked who No. 3 might be. All
answered at once, “Archy Stillman!”
“Is he a mystery?” asked Peterson.
“Is he a mystery? Is Archy Stillman a mystery?” said Wells-Fargo’s man,
Ferguson. “Why, the fourth dimension’s foolishness to him.”
For Ferguson was learned.
Peterson wanted to hear all about him; everybody wanted to tell him;
everybody began. But Billy Stevens, the barkeeper, called the house to
order, and said one at a time was best. He distributed the drinks, and
appointed Ferguson to lead. Ferguson said:
“Well, he’s a boy. And that is just about all we know about him. You
can pump him till you are tired; it ain’t any use; you won’t get