"Thanks to you," said Apache Kid. "Which reminds me that there may be others on the track of us; though how these fellows followed so quick I——" "O, pshaw!" said Donoghue. "You must have come away careless from Baker City. I saw the stage comin’ in from where I was layin’, and I saw them two fellows comin’ up half an hour after." "O!" said Apache Kid, paying no heed to the charge of a careless departure. "And anybody else suspicious-looking?" Donoghue shook his head. But the meal was now ready, and I do not know when I enjoyed a meal as I did that flapjack and the bacon and the big canful of tea made with water from a creek half a mile along the hill, as Apache Kid told me, so that I knew he had been busy before I awoke. I felt a little easier at the heart now than on the night before, and less inclined to renounce my agreement and return. But suddenly, as we were saddling up again, the thought of those dead men came into my head; and though of a certainty they had been evil men, yet the thought that these two with me had taken human lives gave me a "grew," as the Scots say. I turned about and looked at my companions. "Would you be annoyed if I suggested turning back?" I asked, coming right to the point. It was Donoghue who answered. "Guess we would n’t be annoyed; but you would n’t get leave, you dirty turncoat." But Apache turned wrathfully on him. "Turncoat?" he cried. "Do you think he wants to go down and give us away? If you do, you ’re off the scent entirely. It ’s the thought of those dead men that has sickened him of coming." "O, pshaw!" cried Donoghue, grinning. "Sorry I spoke, Francis. There ’s my fist; shake. Never mind the dead men." We "shook," but I have to say that I did not relish the feel of that hand, somehow. He was a man, this, who lived in a different world from mine. "Why, sure you can go back, if you like," said he. And then suddenly he caught himself up and said: "No, no, for the love of God don’t do that! Apache Kid and me don’t do with being alone in the mountains." On one point at least this man felt deeply, it would appear. "Well," said Apache Kid to me. "That’s a better tone of Donoghue’s. To beseech a favour is always better than to threaten or to attempt coercion and I must add my voice to his and ask you to come on with us. Though personally," he added, "had I once made a compact with anyone, I would carry it through to the bitter end." "I should never have suggested this," said I, feeling reproved. "I will not mention it again." This was the end of my uncertainty, and we rode on through the June day till we came to the north part of the Kettle River, gurgling and bubbling and moving in itself with sucking, oily whirlpools, and travelled beside it a little way and then left it at the bend where it seethed black and turbid with a sound like a herd bellowing.