Then the singing ceased, and the cry that I now knew well, the dusk cry of the coyotes, rose in a howl, with three or four yelps in the middle of it and the doleful melancholy baying at the close.
I looked round the group at the fire again.
"Well," said Apache Kid, the first to speak, "who’s to night-herd the horses?"
The man Dan rose up at that. It was he who alone of all my tormentors on the cliff had spoken a word with anything of kindness in it.
"I ’ll take the first guard, if you like," said he.
"One of your side, then," said he, "can take the next guard—share and share—time about, I guess; eh?"
Apache Kid threw the end of his cigarette into the fire and, drawing out his pouch, rolled another and moistened it before he replied.
"Why do you talk about sides at all?" he asked. "I thought we were a joint stock company now?"
"Well, well," snapped Farrell, "I mean one of you three—you or one of your partners."
"Quite so; I know what you mean. I understand your meaning perfectly."
There was a pause and then said he, taking a brand from the fire and lighting his cigarette, so that I saw his full, healthy eye shine bright: "If you are going to talk about sides in this expedition—then so be it. But I don’t think our side, as you call it, will bother with any night-herding; indeed, I think we need hardly trouble about saddling up or unpacking or cooking or anything—if you make it a matter of sides." And he blew a feather of smoke. "I think my side will live like gentlemen between now and the arrival at the Lost Cabin Mine."
"You see," he explained, "the fact is, you need us and we don’t need you. It’s a case of supply and demand and—seeing you talk of sides," he said, with what must have been, to Farrell, an aggravating insistence, "our side at present is wanted. It’s almost a sort of example of the workings of capital and labour. No!" he ended, with a satisfied grunt, "I don’t think there’s any need for me to tend horses at all, thanks. I ’m quite comfy by the fire."
There was a shrewd, calculating look on Farrell’s face as he looked Apache Kid cunningly in the eye a space. I could wager that he was making himself certain from this speech that Apache Kid was the principal in our expedition. I think he really believed that I could say nothing of the Lost Cabin, even had I desired to, and from the way he looked then to Donoghue and looked back again to Apache Kid it struck me forcibly that he was wondering if it were possible that Larry Donoghue was not "in the know" to the full, but merely of the company in a similar way with myself.