Snow-Bound at Eagle's. Bret Harte
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don’t understand.”
“I reckon you know what a duel is?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the chances agin US was about the same as you’d have ef you was put up agin another chap who was allowed to draw a bead on you, and the signal to fire was YOUR DRAWIN’ YOUR WEAPON. You may be a stranger to this sort o’ thing, and p’r’aps you never fought a duel, but even then you wouldn’t go foolin’ your life away on any such chances.”
Something in the man’s manner, as in a certain sly amusement the other passengers appeared to extract from the conversation, impressed Hale, already beginning to be conscious of the ludicrous insufficiency of his own grievance beside that of his interlocutor.
“Then you mean to say this thing is inevitable,” said he bitterly, but less aggressively.
“Ez long ez they hunt YOU; when you hunt THEM you’ve got the advantage, allus provided you know how to get at them ez well as they know how to get at you. This yer coach is bound to go regular, and on certain days. THEY ain’t. By the time the sheriff gets out his posse they’ve skedaddled, and the leader, like as not, is takin’ his quiet cocktail at the Bank Exchange, or mebbe losin’ his earnings to the sheriff over draw poker, in Sacramento. You see you can’t prove anything agin them unless you take them ‘on the fly.’ It may be a part of Joaquim Murietta’s band, though I wouldn’t swear to it.”
“The leader might have been Gentleman George, from up-country,” interposed a passenger. “He seemed to throw in a few fancy touches, particlerly in that ‘Good night.’ Sorter chucked a little sentiment in it. Didn’t seem to be the same thing ez, ‘Git, yer d—d suckers,’ on the other line.”
“Whoever he was, he knew the road and the men who travelled on it. Like ez not, he went over the line beside the driver on the box on the down trip, and took stock of everything. He even knew I had those greenbacks; though they were handed to me in the bank at Sacramento. He must have been hanging ‘round there.”
For some moments Hale remained silent. He was a civic-bred man, with an intense love of law and order; the kind of man who is the first to take that law and order into his own hands when he does not find it existing to please him. He had a Bostonian’s respect for respectability, tradition, and propriety, but was willing to face irregularity and impropriety to create order elsewhere. He was fond of Nature with these limitations, never quite trusting her unguided instincts, and finding her as an instructress greatly inferior to Harvard University, though possibly not to Cornell. With dauntless enterprise and energy he had built and stocked a charming cottage farm in a nook in the Sierras, whence he opposed, like the lesser Englishman that he was, his own tastes to those of the alien West. In the present instance he felt it incumbent upon him not only to assert his principles, but to act upon them with his usual energy. How far he was impelled by the half-contemptuous passiveness of his companions it would be difficult to say.
“What is to prevent the pursuit of them at once?” he asked suddenly. “We are a few miles from the station, where horses can be procured.”
“Who’s to do it?” replied the other lazily. “The stage company will lodge the complaint with the authorities, but it will take two days to get the county officers out, and it’s nobody else’s funeral.”
“I will go for one,” said Hale quietly. “I have a horse waiting for me at the station, and can start at once.”
There was an instant of silence. The stage-coach had left the obscurity of the forest, and by the stronger light Hale could perceive that his companion was examining him with two colorless, lazy eyes. Presently he said, meeting Hale’s clear glance, but rather as if yielding to a careless reflection,—
“It MIGHT be done with four men. We oughter raise one man at the station.” He paused. “I don’t know ez I’d mind taking a hand myself,” he added, stretching out his legs with a slight yawn.
“Ye can count ME in, if you’re goin’, Kernel. I reckon I’m talkin’ to Kernel Clinch,” said the passenger beside Hale with sudden alacrity. “I’m Rawlins, of Frisco. Heerd of ye afore, Kernel, and kinder spotted you jist now from your talk.”
To Hale’s surprise the two men, after awkwardly and perfunctorily grasping each other’s hand, entered at once into a languid conversation on the recent election at Fresno, without the slightest further reference to the pursuit of the robbers. It was not until the remaining and undenominated passenger turned to Hale, and, regretting that he had immediate business at the Summit, offered to accompany the party if they would wait a couple of hours, that Colonel Clinch briefly returned to the subject.
“FOUR men will do, and ez we’ll hev to take horses from the station we’ll hev to take the fourth man from there.”
With these words he resumed his uninteresting conversation with the equally uninterested Rawlins, and the undenominated passenger subsided into an admiring and dreamy contemplation of them both. With all his principle and really high-minded purpose, Hale could not help feeling constrained and annoyed at the sudden subordinate and auxiliary position to which he, the projector of the enterprise, had been reduced. It was true that he had never offered himself as their leader; it was true that the principle he wished to uphold and the effect he sought to obtain would be equally demonstrated under another; it was true that the execution of his own conception gravitated by some occult impulse to the man who had not sought it, and whom he had always regarded as an incapable. But all this was so unlike precedent or tradition that, after the fashion of conservative men, he was suspicious of it, and only that his honor was now involved he would have withdrawn from the enterprise. There was still a chance of reasserting himself at the station, where he was known, and where some authority might be deputed to him.
But even this prospect failed. The station, half hotel and half stable, contained only the landlord, who was also express agent, and the new volunteer who Clinch had suggested would be found among the stable-men. The nearest justice of the peace was ten miles away, and Hale had to abandon even his hope of being sworn in as a deputy constable. This introduction of a common and illiterate ostler into the party on equal terms with himself did not add to his satisfaction, and a remark from Rawlins seemed to complete his embarrassment.
“Ye had a mighty narrer escape down there just now,” said that gentleman confidentially, as Hale buckled his saddle girths.
“I thought, as we were not supposed to defend ourselves, there was no danger,” said Hale scornfully.
“Oh, I don’t mean them road agents. But HIM.”
“Who?”
“Kernel Clinch. You jist ez good as allowed he hadn’t any grit.”
“Whatever I said, I suppose I am responsible for it,” answered Hale haughtily.
“That’s what gits me,” was the imperturbable reply. “He’s the best shot in Southern California, and hez let daylight through a dozen chaps afore now for half what you said.”
“Indeed!”
“Howsummever,” continued Rawlins philosophically, “ez he’s concluded to go WITH ye instead of FOR ye, you’re likely to hev your ideas on this matter carried out up to the handle. He’ll make short work of it, you bet. Ef, ez I suspect, the leader is an airy young feller from Frisco, who hez took to the road lately, Clinch hez got a personal grudge agin him from a quarrel over draw poker.”
This was the last blow to Hale’s ideal crusade. Here he was—an honest, respectable citizen—engaged as simple accessory to a lawless vendetta originating at a gambling table! When the first shock was over that grim philosophy which is the reaction of all imaginative and sensitive natures came to his aid. He felt better; oddly enough he began to be conscious that he was thinking and acting like his companions. With this feeling a vague sympathy, before absent, faintly showed itself in their actions. The Sharpe’s rifle put into his hands by the stable-man was accompanied by a familiar word of suggestion as to an equal, which he was ashamed to find flattered him. He was able to continue the conversation with Rawlins more coolly.
“Then you suspect