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The next day, Grey, and I, and Spellman were ordered to join the schooner with twenty hands. Perigal still kept command, and at the last moment McAllister came on board to act as his first-lieutenant, with the assistant-surgeon Macquoid, and a clerk, Bobus, as purser.
So most of what followed was seen by Injun, and heard about by Whitey. There came the time when the surviving sheepmen could no longer remain in the house. Like a wise leader, Donald Spellman divided his forces, and ten crouching figures emerged from the front of the house, and ten from the back, and were outlined against the flames, as they scurried away.
An exclamation from Toby threw Spellman off his guard, when a full blow, which I had planted on his breast, sent him reeling back into the not very tender clutches of old Krause, the master-at-arms. "What is this about, young gentlemen?" exclaimed Mr Lukyn, in a severe tone. "Fighting is against the articles of war."
"You can hear a lot that ain't true. This happens to be." "You know, I was telling " "Well, the sight of you don't put me in the mood to be told much." There was an imperceptible shifting of the crowd around the table. They were moving away from Spellman. "I was telling my wife " "My girl, you mean! It wasn't enough to keep my business, you had to go home an' marry my girl, too, didn't you?"
I had my doubts, however, of Macquoid's sincerity, and having had some experience of his mode of treatment on a former occasion, resolved to be very much better the next visit he paid us. I said nothing to Spellman, whose spirits rose immediately. "I told you so," he exclaimed, when Macquoid was gone. "I told you I should humbug Johnny Sawbones."
I didn't plan that cattle stampede. It was a dirty trick." "Who did?" Walter asked eagerly. And Spellman answered that question with the last words he ever spoke. It was at this time that Injun, still crouching behind his boulder, saw something like a miracle a dead man coming to life. The man had fallen at the first volley, and the fight had swung past him.
Grey and I laughed. "Well, Mr Johnson, it must be hot indeed," said I, and, though I did not exactly put faith in his account, I began to wish we had been bound elsewhere. The boatswain saw Spellman listening with mouth agape. "Hot, I believe you," he continued; "did you ever sit on a red-hot gridiron with your feet under the grate, your head in the fire, and your fists in boiling water?
"When the Star Circle herd was stampeded by them white-caps," Lampson went on, "an' we got them sheepmen for doin' it, Donald Spellman cashed in, but before doin' so he told me who put up the job. It was this feller Dorgan. Him a cowman, an' he turned ag'in' his kind for money. Are we goin' t' let him get away?" Henry Dorgan's feeling of relief was gone, and he crouched behind Mr.
Gogles and Spellman, and even Grey, looked puzzled. I had long suspected that the origin of Mr Johnson's history was derived from a source considerably removed from fact; and from the peculiar way in which he screwed up his mouth, and the merry twinkle of his one eye for the other he shut with the comic twist of his nose I now had not the slightest doubt of the matter.
He took his bantering ill in public, and brooded over the subject in private, till he began to believe that his courage was doubted, and that he must do some very daring deed to retrieve it. But I must do old Perigal the credit to say that he never bantered him, though Spellman did whenever he thought he could give a sly hit with impunity.
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