Adventure stories; Mines and mineral resources -- Fiction; Western stories
"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."
*CHAPTER V*
_*I Agree to "Keep the Peace" in a New Sense*_
It was at once evident that I was not to be murdered in H. B. Blaine’s
place, and also evident that I had been invited to meet Apache Kid to
hear some matter that was not for all to hear; for immediately on our
entering the little rear room he flung aside a paper he had been reading
and leaped to his feet to meet us. He put a hand on Donoghue’s shoulder
and the other he extended to me.
"We’ll not talk here," he said. "Walls have ears:" and so we all turned
about and marched out again.
"Going out for a strowl?" asked Blaine.
"Yes," said Apache. "Fine night for a strowl." And we found ourselves
on the street down which we turned and walked in silence.
Suddenly Apache Kid slowed down and swore to himself.
"I should n’t have said that!" he remarked angrily.
"Said what?" Donoghue interrogated.
"O! mocked Blaine like that—said we were going for a strowl."
"What do you mean?" asked Donoghue, whose ear did not seem very acute.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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