And just then, "All aboard!" we heard the stage-driver intone at the door. When we came forth again there were only two horses before the hotel. "The red-headed man and his friend are gone," thought I, as I climbed to my place, and away we lumbered through the night, the great headlights throwing their radiance forward on the road in overlapping cones that sped before us, the darkness chasing us up behind. *CHAPTER VIII* _*What Befell at the Half-Way House*_ Of the second incident that befell on the journey to Camp Kettle I must tell you because it had a far-reaching effect and a good deal more to do with our expedition than could possibly have been foretold at the time. Of the incident at the Rest House, which I have just narrated, Apache Kid said nothing, and as curiosity is not one of my failings (many others though I have), to question I never dreamt; and besides, in the West, even the inquisitive learn to listen without inquiring, and he evidently had no intention of explaining. But when, at last, after a very long silence during which our three fellow-travellers looked at him in the dusk of the coach (whose only light was that reflected from the lamp-lit road) with interest, and admiration, I believe, he said in a low voice which I alone could hear, owing to the creaking and screaming of the battered vehicle: "I think you and I had better be strangers; only fellow-travellers thrown together by chance, not fellow-plotters journeying together with design." "I understand," said I, and this resolution we accordingly carried out. After a night and a day’s journey, with only short stops for watering and "snatch meals," we were hungry and sleepily happy and tired when we came to the "Half-Way-to-Kettle Hotel" standing up white-painted and sun-blistered in the midst of the sand and sage-brush; and I, for my part, paid little heed to the hangers-on who watched our arrival, several of whom stretched hands simultaneously for the honour of catching the reins which the driver flung aside in his long-practised, aggressive manner—a manner without which he had seemed something less than a real stage-driver. I noticed that Apache Kid had taken his belt and revolver from his blanket-roll and now, indeed, was "heeled" for all men to see, for it was a heavy Colt he used. Indoors were tables set, in a room at one side of the entrance, with clean, white table-cloths and a young woman waiting to attend our wants after we had washed the dust of the way from our faces and hands and brushed the grit from our clothes with a horse brush which hung in the cool though narrow hall-way. Apache Kid sat at one table, I at another, two of our fellow-voyagers at a third. The remaining traveller announced to the bearded proprietor who stood at the door, in tones of something very like pride, that he wanted no supper except half a pound of cheese, a bottle of pickles, and a medium bottle of whisky.