# From The Four Winds/A Prairie Oyster

pp. 176–205.
A PRAIRIE OYSTER
'I drink my love at the fall of night,
As the glow dies out of the Western sky;
I drink to the whirr of the widgeon's flight,
And the coyote's yowl, as we drundle by.
'I drink my love in the prairie morn,
With a "Hey! farewell!" to the falling moon.
To the stars a-point at the flush of dawn.
And the waking cry of the watchful loon.
'I drink my love in the heat and glare.
With the sun a-flame on the silent lake;
I drink to the hum of the quivering air.
To the beat and throb of the world awake.
'Here's a toast to them all! And it's sung refrain
Is the clink and jar of a westward train.'
We droned along in one of those fits of despondency peculiar to trains that have an immensity of flat ground in which to pick up their lost time.
The night was a lovely one, hot, with a bright moon silvering the prairie, and trying vainly to throw shadows in a shadowless space. In a meditative mood, I lounged on the platform against the open door of the smoking car, and it seemed to me that I was taking a lesson in the comprehension of infinity. A rolling plain as far as the eye could reach—not a tree—not a house—as limitless and as empty as the sky itself.
A peculiar feeling of rest and freedom at first possessed me; I was, or thought I was, beginning to understand many things hitherto unrevealed, to have a sympathy with Simon Stylites, and an appreciation of Mahatma; but soon a wild desire to project myself indefinitely into space seized upon me. The moonlight and the vastness were getting into my brain—a little more, and I might have leapt from the train, and run until nature or prairie dog holes should assert their influence upon me;—and then with a saving grace, a couple of coyotes appeared from behind a hillock, and played with their tails in the moonlight—and the spell was broken.
I became conscious that my cigar was out, that the mosquitoes were annoyingly attentive. Better to be a limited being in a smoking car and not itch, than to be an unlimited being outside it and itch most 'demnibly.' I went back into the smoking-room.
Empty, thank heaven—no professionals from the Golden City to talk faro and rowdyism; no commercials to bombard one with down Eastern brag, the decline of Winnipeg, or the future of Vancouver and the C. P. R.; no globe-trotting sportsman to bewail his luck in the Rockies, or abuse the British Columbian for a liar.
'Empty, thank God.'
'Take a light, sir?' said a soft, rather high pitched, drawling voice under my left elbow. I jumped, and, to disguise it, smote my cheek, where a mosquito might have been, but was not.
A man of about forty, a long figure in a sleeping suit, with a lean, brown, clean-shaven face, courteously bending forward, held towards me the lighted end of a cigar.
'Thanks very much, sir; delighted to find I'm not alone.'
'Not empty, thank God; ' said Mr Dick Denver, in an unmoved voice.
'My dear sir,' said I, sitting down next to him, 'I should'nt have dreamed of that remark, if I'd seen you; but you were so completely tucked away in that corner, that I'd no idea you were here, and I must confess I was uncommonly glad not to see our 'Frisco friends, or the bummers' {Anglice commercial travellers).
'Guess you're right; they are kind of tiring.'
'What beats me,' I went on, 'is the way people like that, who really have nothing to say, insist upon saying it, and, by Gad, enjoy saying it, and are certain you enjoy hearing them say it, and set you down as a condemned fool if you don't say it yourselves.'
'Right,' said Mr Denver; 'for a man that spreads himself around to be dull,-give me a woman first, and then a bummer. And yet,' he went on meditatively, 'there are some profoundly interesting beetles amongst that last tribe; and—amongst the other too.' He sighed, and relapsed into the silent puffing of his cigar. I had not travelled from Montreal nearly to Calgary with Mr Denver without discovering that he was a silent man on all subjects, and on the subject of women a dumb, and apparently a deaf image. Try him upon the subject of 'bummers' the oyster might open for once, I thought, but without much hope.
'Did you ever have anything to do with any curious specimen?' I said carelessly.
'Some,' he said; 'one mainly—Irishman—he travelled in wine; I guess he was the smartest coon I ever struck, but no head—or rather too much head, like a glass of stout'
'All Irishmen are like that,' I said, sententiously and untruthfully; then, with a cautious insertion of the opener, 'what was his name?'
'Kinahan; we called him Kinjan,' and—more to himself than to me—'Jupiter! I was in the tightest kind of a hole with that cuss and one other.'
'Really tight?' said I.
'Never tighter, except about three times, and those I don't take much stock in talking of.'
'Women?' I said hardily. He nodded.
'And others,' he added, as if he had thereby over-committed himself.
'It seems to me,' said I, feeling the opener deepening in the shell, 'you don't "take much stock" in talking of anything, considering that you really have got something to say; tell me this yarn of Kinjan, and be a benefactor to a poor sleep-forsaken devil.'
Mr Denver chewed the end of his cigar.
'Bore you world without end,' he said.
'Try me,' I besought.
'We must have drinks, then.' He heaved himself up, and called melodiously over the car platforms.
When the materials had been brought, Mr Denver constructed himself his favourite pick-me-up, in which raw egg and cayenne pepper formed the chief ingredients.
'Let me mix you one,' he said; 'guess you won't weaken on it; it's short, but it's breezy.'
We drank together, and our hearts were opened within us, and we became as brothers. Through the open door and window the wonderful silver prairie night came in, and the lamp of the smoking-room flickered and went out before its breath. We swallowed another prairie oyster each, and the strings of Mr Dick Denver's tongue were unloosed, and he spake plain, if a little through his nose.
And as he spake, the snoring from the sleeping-saloon and the snorting of the engine became to me as the roaring of the surf upon the sea-shore, and the rolling prairie as the sands of the desert, and afar off a lone clump of trees shining white under the moon as the minarets of a distant Moorish city.
'Well,' he said, 'I was moving around one time on a cargo steamer, calculating to go to Madeira or Teneriffe, and see what I could strike out of those parts. Well, you know, I don't cotton to "tramps;" they're a pretty ordinary lot, and the one I was on that trip was tough, just tough; from the skipper down to the bacon the whole show was tough. There were only three passengers on board: myself, this Kinjan, and a long Britisher, by name Torin—the Hon. Christopher Torin was his full label.' Mr Denver paused, and tilted his head back in his seat, and in this attitude, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, resumed, through a cloud of smoke.
'Yes,' he said, 'I guess I am of opinion that Mr Torin was by a considerable way the coolest and the silentest cuss I ever struck, and I've had experience; but with it, mind you, he was the most reckless devil that ever let in to make the universe hum. He wasn't long out of some mess or other—woman, I heard—and likely enough—poor beggar!'—and Mr Denver heaved a sigh of smoke that brought a stupefied mosquito down from the ceiling. Presently he resumed.
'He was a long, good-looking chap, with a don't-care look, and one of those short, fair beards that grow on so many of you Britishers—going a bit grey—and an extraordinary strong man, thick through, and long in the limb. He was going down to Madeira, to fetch one of the South African boats for a shooting trip. We three used to mess together, you know, and got pretty thick,—Kinjan blowing around and spreading himself, Torin smoking and drinking, and now and then nodding his head, and I laying up and figuring them out—not for professional reasons, but because it's kind of got to be a habit of mine, and they were two of the queerest bugs.
"Not alone in their glory," I thought to myself, but, beyond a grunt of appreciation, said nothing; the oyster was fairly open now.
'Well, one evening about four bells,—while we were making down pretty near in to the Morocco coast, and about a hundred miles top side of Mogador,—I was leaning over the port rail aft, snuffing up the phosphorus, and admiring at the right down smartness of the skipper, shoving in shore on a real reefy coast, when there came an everlasting jolt, and before I could get in the thin end of a cuss, I guess I was treading water, and blowing like a grampus, forty yards from a fast-sinking ship. It wasn't any good going back—that was clear—she wouldn't be above water another five minutes, so I lit out and shoved for the shore,—a long white streaky line about a quarter of a mile off, with a blamed current setting me off it. I had to get there, or bust, and I got, but it was stiff going, and when I had made the sand I was as badly roasted as a leg of pork.
'I easied a bit, and lay up with my legs in the water, though the tide running out soon left them high and dry. By and bye, I came round, and concluded to prospect along that shore, and see if any other wreckage had come to hand. It was pretty dark, but the sands were easy going, and there was a moon just getting up. I guess I hadn't gone above a few hundred yards when I saw something white, about the height of a man's figure, rising out of the sand a short way off. When I got nearer I saw it was a man, Torin himself, leaning on an oar and looking down at his legs, which were quite bare.
'I fetched out a howl of joy, and ran for him. I remember he just turned his head, and all he said was: "Haven't got a pair of breeches to lend a chap, have you?" Seems he'd been in his berth when the ship struck, and the lower end of his pyjamas had sprung and cut adrift in swimming, and left him in pale pink above, and another kind of a pale pink below. Being a tidy sort of a cuss, he was a good piece annoyed, so I reckoned we had better get right along with the prospecting, and it might be we should run on that nether end. However, we didn't, and presently, as we were a good bit stretched with swimming against the tide, we lay up under a sand hillock and had considerable sleep. I guess it might have been an hour or so after dawn, when I was woke by a curious screechy sort of a noise. As soon as I got my ears under weigh, I found it panned out something like, "Bedad! ye divils, begorra, be aisy, bejabbers!"—seemed kind of Irish. I rolled over from sleeping inland, and, by the holy poker, within fifty yards of where we had slept, washed up high and dry by the tide, which had turned in the night and was then about full, was a barr'l with a head on it, and out of that head was just pouring the thickest kind of Irish. A man could see that the inside of that barr'l was yearning to have some sort of consideration paid to it. I roused up Torin, and we went down quietly, and inspected the cask from behind. It was a very nice barr'l—a butter barr'l—and I judge about a third full of butter, and may be two-thirds full of Kinjan; and the funny thing was that the poor coon had been washed up stuck fast in that barr'l with his head turned out to sea, so as he couldn't suspicion we were around, and he was waltzing into creation with the finest language, and the air was real stiff with cussing. Well, I guess we laughed some, though we were tarnation glad to see him,—that is, I laughed, and Torin stood there stroking his beard, with the nearest approach to a grin I ever saw on him. The laughing just drove Kinjan mad, and he wrenched round with a mighty wriggle, and when he saw us he fairly surpassed himself, cussing us up and down, beginning with our boot laces—which were mighty scarce, by the way. His remarks were not worth repeating.
'When he had dried up, owing to a trickle of butter dripping from his head into his mouth,—he was buttery all over,—Torin said, "Got any bread with you?" That set him off again, but he toned down mighty quick, and ended up by saying quite quietly:
'"Take me out of this, and be d——d to ye, ye leather-headed sons of bottle-washers!" and then he fainted. So we took him out, and hung him over the cask, and sluiced water over him, and presently he came to, ca'm, but pretty yallow.
''Pears when the ship struck, he'd been jerked off the poop right into this butter barr'l, which was standing open and most empty on the lower deck. When he felt the ship disappearing under him, being an Irishman, and a genius, with a turn for expurriment,—but I guess mainly because he couldn't swim,—he calculated to stay where he was. He grabbed a bit of wood that came along, and by means of this managed to keep the barr'l top side up, the sea luckily being as ca'm as a mill-pond. He said he was first taken out maybe hundred of miles till he could most smell the Canaries, and then brought in again on the turning tide and washed up. In his struggles near shore, he'd kicked clean through the bottom of the cask, and, getting his leg jammed tight through the hole, was as fast as a tick when we found him. He had a down on butter afterwards; he never 'peared to go much on it, 'slong as I knew him.'
Over Mr Denver's face, which had hitherto been as unmoved and expressionless as carved mahogany, twinkled a fleeting look of joy, which disappeared with the next puff of his cigar.
'That was not the most amusing day I have spent,' he went on, meditatively; 'we kept mighty busy looking for fixings and finding none to speak of; I guess the current must have appropriated all that was useful in the old tub,—only the most or'nery articles came along—empty hencoops, and barr'ls, and such like—not a single tarnation thing to eat or drink. I judge the skipper and most of the crew turned up their toes, though I heard afterwards that four of them were saved out of a small boat by a passing vessel. Torin got a piece of sail-cloth, and made himself a pinafore, which comforted him some. Kinjan slept most of the day, and when he woke up, he told us we were fools, and that what we wanted instead of mooning around for things from the sea, was to go inland and find out if there weren't any houses or cities in the vicinity; and then he rolled himself up tight in the shade of that sand-heap like a darned yellow dormouse, and went to sleep again; I guess he must have had a most amazing wide-awake time in that barr'l, I never saw a man sleep so. Torin and I were most powerfully hungry and thirsty by this, so we went inland a piece and looked about us for the highest ground we could find,—the country was as blamed flat, mind you, as this prairie. We found a sand hillock that rose a bit above the rest of the ground, and Torin made a back and said "get up;" so I got, and stood on his shoulders, and looked; and presently out of the distance away to the south-east, it might have been five or six miles, I could see some white spikey things seeming to stick up out of the yallow horizon. I told Torin, and he got up on me, and when he came down—which he did pretty smart, owing to my balance going wrong—he cursed gently, with his mouth full of sand, and said, "Minarets, city!"
'Well, we went back to Kinjan, who was awake, for a wonder, and told him; and then he said he'd just remembered the whole country round those parts was in the hands of the rebels, and that if we were seen we should be killed, so he recommended us to go on hunting along shore, till we ran across a boat, and get away in that, and he recommended us particularly to look out for a barr'l of whisky; then he went to sleep again. Well, we just sat down, and waited for him to get thirsty, calculating that when that was so, being an Irishman, he would find us a way out of the fix. And presently he got, and it woke him up, and after cursing a bit, he sat up quite spry—but a piece yallow still—and figured out the most beautiful plan of how we would go and take that city if necessary, and make them provide us with an escort down to Mogador. Then he said it was no good doing anything till it was cool and dark. So he lay down again and went to sleep; and after one more look along shore we lay down alongside and did the same, meaning to start with the dawn next morning for the city. I reckon we were played out that evening, and felt real rocky and dispurited.'
Dick Denver's memories of that thirsty day were here too much for him; he rose and called again for drinks across the platform. When they had come, in the hands of a sleepy and coloured individual, he finished a whisky and soda at a single draught, and resumed.
'That fellow was infectious, I guess; anyway I slept until a heavy sort of feeling about my chest woke me, and I found a great hairy nigger cuss had taken me for an arm-chair. All around us in the moonlight were a lot of ferocious-looking devils in long robes and turbans, armed to the teeth. Torin was lying spread-eagled on my right—he didn't 'pear to be discommoded—but he spat out a broken tooth, and I heard him mutter to himself, "You fools, much better have killed me, and have done with it;" and I judged he was powerfully divided between two sorts of wish.
'There was a nigger holding on to each of my arms and legs, so I took it quietly, and they bound me up like an eternal mummy. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Kinjan's face shining round and red in the middle of a mass of niggers. He rolled his eye at me, and began, "Be aisy, Dick—Begad! I'll take tay with ye prisintly, ye hairy haythens!" Just then one of the niggers stuffed his mouth with sand, so he shut his head kind of sudden. Then they picketed their horses round us, and sat on their haunches, and pow-wowed everlastingly.
'I judged we were in the hands of a band of rebel Moors loafing along shore in search of wreckage; and a man could see with half an eye it was a tight place. I wasn't more than six feet from Kinjan, and I could tell by the prick of his ears he was understanding the pow-wow; living as he did at "Gib," he'd been a lot in the country and sabed the lingo well. Lie low was the only game, and I lay and thunk a lot, but all the time I felt kind of certain that if we were coming out of that place, it was Kinjan's show—and the more so because I knew he was almighty dry. Their chief seemed a venerable kind of a bug, with a long white beard and turban, and he did most of the pow-wowing. Presently they easied off, and after looking us over well, and giving us a kick or two, set two sentinels, and turned in for sleep. The sentries stood out about twenty yards; and when the others seemed fixed pretty quiet, Kinjan gave a gentle roll of his fat carcase towards me, and said, out of his back teeth (I can't give his accent, but it was real rich): "Thanks be to Jasus, one of me knots is a granny. Praise the pigs, I'll be out of ut in ten minutes. Tell Torin; and when I give ye the wink, stand by, and I'll cut ye loose—then grab what ye can and clear the camp; whist!" One of the sentries faced round right there and came towards us; he prodded at me with the butt end of his lance to see that I couldn't move when he tickled me, and he rolled Kinjan over with his foot; we neither of us budged, so he concluded we were fixed, and mouched back again.
'I counted the gang; there were fifteen of them. Torin was laying very low about three yards away, but I judged from a sign he made when the sentry vamoosed, that he knew things were about to progress. After what seemed a 'nation long time, Kinjan raised his head, and I saw from his movements he'd succeeded in freeing his hands; presently he came rolling gently on to me, and I felt the point of his blamed knife going in as he cut the thongs; then he handed me the knife, and I rolled on to Torin and hacked him loose; and just as I got through, one of the sentries tumbled to it, and came for us like greased lightning. I saw Kinjan throw out his arm from the ground, and the cuss tripped right over it on to us, and his spear went into the ground through my coat.
'Kinjan raised a whoop, and got that spear and ran it through the man next him—he was a bloodthirsty little cuss. I laid for the sentry's pistols—he had two—and drew a very neat bead on the other sentry.
'Torin he just sat up and purred, and then when the devils began to come on, he took that fallen sentry by the legs, and got a wiggle on him, and went for them into the thick; and he swung the poor devil round and round and cleared that crowd like fury—'peared they didn't understand the game. He laid out three of them, and then they scattered and drew back; I dropped another with the other pistol, and Kinjan charged right down on the old chief, and bowled him over with the butt-end of his spear. "'Tis all over, bhoys," he said, and sat on the old gentleman; and so it was. When they saw the tail-ends of their boss waving in the air, the rest of them made tracks. In the intervals of sticking the business end of his spear into things, Kinjan had cut loose all their horses but four or five, and there was a beautiful scrimmage over those sand hillocks, men and horses all mixed, and travelling in most directions like fury. That was a vūrry tidy dodge of Torin's,—maybe it was rough on the sentry, but it was vūrry impressive—some of the impressions might have been a foot long, I should judge.' He paused; the train had stopped with a jerk at a station, and the engine was blowing off steam with a disturbing energy.
'Durn the durned thing,' said Mr Denver; but presently he resumed, as we droned on again.
'We—ell,' and there was an alarming touch of boredom in his tone, 'after we'd tied the old boy, we had a quiet time, doctoring up those we'd stretched, as best we could, and figuring out what was to be done. Kinjan and I palavered over the chances, but Torin didn't seem to care what we did, and seemed sort of disgusted with the whole affair. He stood leaning on a spear by the horses, and once I heard him mutter, "Damn! shan't get such a chance again." I judged he would have let himself be killed like a sheep, but the fighting instinct was too strong for him; he was as sulky as he could be, but he did what he was told, which was the main thing. I was for riding along the coast and trying to make Mogador, but Kinjan over-persuaded me that a bold course was the best thing; he wanted to go right there for the city. "We've got the weapons, clothes, horses, and a goide, but we've got nothing to dhrink," he said, "and ut would be unbecomin' of us if we lift the neighbourhood without dhroppin' a cyard." He took great pleasure in dressing us up in clothes taken from the deceased, and fussed around like a seven-year-old going to a party—the little devil had lots of sand; he said the great thing was to get into the city, and to do that we must throw in plenty of style.
'At last we got rigged out and mounted; I guess we made pretty fair heathens, all except Kinjan—he was too red and fat. He tied the old chief's hands and his feet under his horse, and make him go first. I came next with a shooting-iron handy, and the other two brought up the rear. After a stretch, Kinjan rode up alongside the old gentleman, and began to blandhander to him in his own tongue, and presently he made me a sign, and then cut the ropes that bound his feet, and the old boy perked up, and began to spread himself; and by the time we came within sight of the town, those two were as thick as thieves. I judge Kinjan would have made a fine poker-player,' said Mr Denver in parentheses, with a sigh of regret.
'It was a light kind of a night, and we could see the walls around the institution from quite a way off. The old boy was heading us for the principal gate, and Kinjan turned to me: "The town's in the hands of the ribils," he said; "but, praises to the Almighty! the ould gintleman's a big pot amongst thim, and he's promised to take us to the Sheikh—or whativer his misbegotten name may be—and git us a pass and an iscort." "Bluff!" I said; "'ware snakes." "Faith! no," said he, "'tis a swate old baboo, and ut's truth he's telling." I wasn't taking any, but it wouldn't have done to interfere then, so I shut my head, and we rode on along the walls. Presently we struck what I judge was the front door; considerable of a high gate, fortified with iron spikes, and vūrry strong. There were no signs of hospitality. "I guess I'll knock," I said, and butted the end of my lance against the gate. A voice cried out from one of the little towers on the walls on each side in a kind of a sing-song; the old chief sung out something in answer, and then they had a palaver. I reckon they spoke some strange lingo, for Kinjan called out to me excitedly, "Can ye understand thim? May me sowl rust if oi can." Before I could answer, we heard a sound of horses tramping, the gate's hinges turned and it swung open, and there in front of us, drawn up in line, with spears in rest, was a troop of most a dozen mounted niggers. "Euchred, be Jasus! The ould schoundhrel! and the drinks oi promused 'um!" said Kinjan, mournfully; I guess I was thinking it was about time to throw up the cards and leave, when Torin trotted his horse past me. "Good-bye, boys," he said, "I'm going into the city." He just waved his hand, clapped his heels into his horse's side, and went like a catamount for the troop. They slashed and speared at him right and left, but they were taken by surprise; and I guess his release hadn't been signed, for he went through them like so much paper. 'Well, sir,'—Mr Denver rolled a cigarette and drew his breath in with a sharp hiss—' how it came about I can't say, but Kinjan and I, with the old gentleman between us, went through after him—they were kind of discommoded, I suppose—Torin was a big man, and he left an aperture. The moment we cleared them, Kinjan put a pistol to the chiefs head. "Ye son of a herring," he said, quite forgetting to speak Moorish, "take us straight to the Sheikh's palace, or I'll schatter yer dhirty brains." The only words of Moorish were Sheikh and palace, but they were enough for the old boy; he was as skeered an old cuss as I ever saw; he ducked from the pistol, touched his forehead, and muttered something, and we all vamoosed down the rattling stone- paved streets, like the job lot of horse-thieves we were.
'The old gentleman was profoundly interested in the business-end of that shooting-iron, and so we got right there without any more hanky-panky; you see the streets were just as empty as a nigger's head, and we had more than a street's start of the guard. When we pulled up sharp in front of a large detached location, we could hear the guard coming, hell for leather. Kinjan explained to the chief that he had got to take us to the Sheikh right along, or he would investigate his interior. Now that old heathen was as swift a man at trapping an idea as ever I saw; he signed to us to get off our horses, and, with the end of the pistol working into the small of his back, he called out loudly in Moorish, and the gate was thrown open for us. 'Then,' said Mr Denver, flipping petulantly at his cigarette ash, 'occurred a most annoying little affair. We were just passing quietly through the doorway, and the guard not more than a hundred yards away, coming like Jerusalem, when Torin pushed me aside, and stepped back to his horse. "Go on," he said, "I've got another word to say to those fellows." He was swinging himself into the saddle, when Kinjan drew a bead on the horse and brought the whole show to the ground. "Not so fast, ye suicidin' divil," he said, "bear ahand, Dick," and before Torin could get his balance we lugged him through the door and shut it. 'I've often regretted it since; 'twasn't a neighbourly thing to do,' said Mr Denver, thoughtfully, 'for when a man wants his release real bad, why in thunder shouldn't he have it?' He lounged back in his seat with a far-away look in his sunken eyes, and I had to jog him with questions once or twice before he took up the word again.
'Well, sir, the old chief had vamoosed down the street in the shindy, and there was only the porter, looking tolerably parti-coloured. When Torin found himself inside, instead of out, as he'd reckoned to be, he just folded his arms and shut his head, and I guess neither of us ever felt like alluding to that incident. Whether the porter took us for devils or not, I can't say, but he was tarnation civil, specially when he felt the end of Kinjan's pistol. As we passed through a stone archway into a courtyard, the house began to hum, and we could hear the guard behind us hammering at the gate we'd just come through. Kinjan pointed out to the porter in Moorish, and shooting-iron, that we were going right up to the Sheikh's bedroom. The unfortunate coon said he reckoned his head was feeling loose, and kind of wobbly on his shoulders, but if we would ascend the steps he pointed to, we would find the Sheikh's private apartments at the top; we thanked him, and he said his head felt real loose; but we took him along and went right there. He played us honest Injun, did that porter, and may be his woolly top's on his shoulders yet; but I'm not betting on that,' drawled Mr Denver, compassionately; and he stopped, turning his head to gaze out of the window.
'Look,' he said, 'there's the dawn.' And sure enough, far away behind us on the eastern horizon, a pale salmon streak slowly lengthened and spread; between us and it on the dim prairie lay a still, murky sheet of water. In front of the train, in its western wayfaring, the young slopes of the Rockies rose shadowy and faint in the growing light. As we stepped out on to the car platform the shrill tragic cry of the loon came floating to us, through the wreathing mist, from across the reedy pools. We watched the sun rise—and those who are watching the sun rise on the prairie and the flushing of the early mountain slopes in the reflected light, are not greatly given to talk. But when it was over, I turned to Dick Denver. His brown, lean face looked drawn and haggard, and he shaded his eyes with his hand. Presently he raised his hand to his hat, and taking it off, stood looking long and steadily at the now risen sun, and his lips moved. If I hadn't known him for a hardened and notorious sinner, I should have said he was muttering a prayer. The impression was so strong upon me that I waited to speak until he had replaced his hat.
'Well?' I said.
'Well?' he replied absently, his eyes still on the far horizon.
'And then? What happened next? Did you see the Sheikh?' I lamely jogged him.
'What!' his mind returned unwillingly. 'You can't in thunder want to hear any more after that?' and he pointed eastwards.
'I'm very sorry,' I said, 'but I most certainly do. I want to hear the rest of your yarn badly.'
'Oh! well,' he said, resignedly, 'I guess there's mighty little left to tell.'
'The Sheikh,' I jogged.
'Oh, yes, the Sheikh,' he went on in a hopelessly bored tone; 'we saw him—he was a vūrry civil cuss, said it was all a mistake, and we were his dearest friends, and the English were his fathers and his brothers and all his relations, and I guess—oh, yes, I guess he sent us down to Mogador with a troop of cavalry, and—that's all.' He turned and went back into the smoking car. The oyster was closing fast.
'Just one question,' I hazarded; 'what became of the other two men afterwards?' He drew out a pack of cards, and began shuffling them, and I had to repeat the question.
'Oh! I guess Kinjan would be alive,—why certainly he would be; unless he might have been caught up in a flame of fire, there wouldn't be any other kind of a death for him,' he said with the ghost of a smile.
'And Torin?'
'Gone out, I reckon,' he said impassively.
The curt grimness of this remark jarred upon me, though why it should have, I don't know; why expect sentiment from Dick Denver, who lived from day's end to day's end with his life in his hands?
'In heaven's name, why indeed?' I said aloud to myself, as I turned once again before going through the door to my berth—Dick Denver was dealing a set of poker hands, and humming softly to himself. It was broad daylight, and the train still droned along. I was dead tired; and as I shut the door softly, and turned into my bunk, instead of an intelligent moral deduction from the story and its teller, all I could think of was the children's grace, 'Thank God for a good dinner.'