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Wonder who he's got with him! They seem to be having a difficulty about something!" The gentlemen who had arraigned Spidertracks allowed him to be acquitted by default. Far better to them was a fight near by than the most interesting lady afar off. They stuck their hands into their pockets, and stared intently.
The afternoon had faded almost into evening, when a decrepit figure, in a black dress and bonnet, approached the cave, and gave Spidertracks a new element for the thrilling report he had composed and mentally rearranged during his few hours of duty as jailer. "Beats the dickens," muttered the reporter to himself, "how these Sisters of Charity always know when a tough case has been caught.
But when, a few days later, the couple took the stage for Rum Valley, the enterprising Spidertracks took an outside passage, and at the end of the route had his persistency rewarded by seeing, in the Bangup House, a Sister of Charity tenderly embrace the major's fair charge, start at the sight of the major, and then, after some whispering by the happy mother, sullenly extend a hand, which the major grasped heartily, and over which there dropped something which, though a drop of water, was not a rain-drop.
I've only just reached here; I don't yet know who's here, but I imagine there's public spirit enough to discourage treachery. Will some one see to him while I take something?" Spidertracks drew his revolver, mildly touched the young man on the shoulder, and remarked: "Come on." To a student of human nature Ernest Mattray was curious, fascinating, and repulsive.
"Spidertracks," said the general, with an air in which authority and supplication were equally prominent, "you've told an awful sight of lies in your time. Don't deny it, now nobody that ever reads the papers will b'leeve you. Now's yer chance to put yer gift of gab to a respectable use.
The lady glanced at him quickly and searchingly, and then, seeming assured of the reporter's honesty, replied: "I am looking for an old acquaintance of mine one Major Axell." "He is not in camp, ma'am," said Spidertracks. "He was at Rum Valley a few days ago, when our party was organized to come here."
"I was there yesterday," said the lady, looking greatly disappointed, "and was told he started for here a day or two before." "Some mistake, ma'am, I assure you," replied Spidertracks. "I should have known of his arrival if he had come. I'm an old newspaper man, ma'am, and can't get out of the habit of getting the news." The lady turned away, but seemed irresolute. The reporter followed her.
Then did Spidertracks return to the home of his adoption, and lavish the stores of his memory; and for days his name was famous, and his liquor was paid for by admiring auditors. "Got him?" "You bet!" The questioner looked pleased, yet not as if his pleasure engendered any mental excitement.
Most of the citizens had, on seeing the lady depart, taken a drink as a partial antidote to dejection, and strolled away to their respective claims, regardless of the occasional mud which threatened the polish on their boots; but two or three gentlemen of irascible tempers and judicial minds lingered, to decide whether Spidertracks had not, by the act of seeing the lady to the stage, made himself an accessory to her departure, and consequently a fit subject for challenge by every disappointed man in camp.
The reporter was in the midst of a very able and voluble defense, when the attention of his hearers seemed distracted by something on the trail by which the original settlers had entered the village. Spidertracks himself looked, shaded his eyes, indulged in certain disconnected fragments of profanity, and finally exclaimed: "Axell himself, by the white coat of Horace Greeley!
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