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Stephens started at the abrupt query, and his face flushed. He paused a moment, looking hard at the other; then he slowly answered, "I don't know that I have ever killed anyone."
"Meanin', I take it," rejoined the other, "that you don't know for certain, neither, that you haven't. I ax yer pardon again, stranger, but as sure as God made little apples I've got a reason for what I'm saying. That ar' time you was in New Mexico years ago that you spoke of just now, was you, by any chance, at the battle of Apache Cañon?"
The words "Apache Cañon" sent a thrill through Manuelita; she knew well that there had been a bloody fight there.
"Yes," answered Stephens, a strange new light beginning to dawn upon him; "I fought at Apache Cañon, if you must know."
"You was on the Northern side, warn't you?" queried the storekeeper again.
"Yes," said the prospector quietly; "I was a volunteer in the Second Colorado Regiment."
"By gum, then, I knowed it!" cried the Texan excitedly; "you was one of the Pet Lambs."
At the beginning of the Civil War the Colorado troops, a pretty tough lot, were sometimes sportively alluded to as the "Pet Lambs."
A dry smile came to Stephens's lips at the sound of the old name. "I was a Lamb," said he.
"And I was one of Baylor's Babes," returned the other.
"Baylor's Babes" was the nickname bestowed upon a force of Texas rangers who invaded New Mexico, and had the audacity to propose to conquer the whole Rocky Mountain country for Jefferson Davis off their own bats.
"Yes, you bet I was a Babe," he repeated, "and a whale of a Babe at that, and hurrahed for Jeff Davis as long as I could stand. But that's all over and done with now, and we've buried the war hatchet. But say, stranger, do you happen to recollect what kind of a wepping you was carrying at Apache Cañon? There warn't no Winchesters in them days," he added, patting the parcel of cartridges that lay on the counter.
"I was armed with a muzzle-loading Springfield U.S. rifle, altered in Denver to fire with a tape cap," replied Stephens. His nerves grew tense, and he braced himself for a possible struggle to the death, for he thought the Texan was about to spring on him; but he only asked with quaint earnestness:
"Du tell; what's a tape cap, mister?"
"Why, did you never see one?" said Stephens. "But of course they're out of date now. It was a dodge for capping a gun automatically. There was a tape fitted with caps that was fed forward on top of the tube in front of the hammer. It worked like a charm. You bet there was no time lost fumbling around in your pouch for a cap with your fingers if you had one of them fixed on your gun."
"Great Scot!" cried Backus, "then now I know how't was."
He raised his hands so suddenly to the neck of his shirt that he made Stephens think he was reaching for the bowie-knife which some fighting men carry in a sheath under the coat at the back of the neck. Manuelita thought the same thing, and drew her breath hard, feeling her heart leap with terror. Instinctively Stephens's fingers found the butt of his revolver, but he felt paralysed at the thought of the defenceless women by the counter. If there was to be a fuss, how could they make their escape before it began?
But Mr. Backus was not preparing to start a fuss, and he was not feeling for a weapon. He tore open the front of his shirt excitedly and bared his breast, and showed a livid bluish mark close beside the collarbone.
"Strange!" he cried, "'t was you as give me that; 't was that darned tape cap of yourn as done me. Now, don't you remember?"
"By thunder, I do!" exclaimed Stephens. "You were the man I shot that day at close quarters. I recall your face now. I thought I'd seen you before."
"I knowed you the minute you set foot inside this door," answered the Texan, drawing himself up, and eyeing Stephens keenly. "You see, you give me a good argyment for remembering you that day. Shake, partner," he added quickly, thrusting out his bony right hand across the counter. "Bygones is bygones. As I said just now, we've buried the war hatchet for good, and I don't bear you no ill-will."
Was this a move to get him off his guard? Stephens felt more than half doubtful, but he decided to chance it, especially as he had a stout sheath-knife handy at his left hip. He loosed his fingers from the ready revolver butt, and the two strong hands met in a vigorous clasp.
CHAPTER VI
AN OLD WOUND REOPENED
If it was a strange coincidence that had thus suddenly brought these two old foes together, face to face, in this remote quarter of New Mexico, it was a coincidence no less strange that they were both there for the same object. For Mr. Backus, too, was after the lost silver mine. Ever since his marriage with the daughter of a Mexican peasant he had made a tolerably easy living in a small way by keeping a country store, and in the knowledge which he thus gained of the common pursuits and dominant ideas among the Mexicans, what fascinated him particularly were the tales of hidden mines and buried treasures so often to be heard amongst them. Of all these tales, the legend of the secret mine of the Indians of Santiago had excited his interest most, so that when he learned that the San Remo stage station in their immediate neighbourhood was vacant, and afforded an opening for a store such as his, he speedily arranged to take charge of it and to transfer himself, his family, and his goods to the spot. He had as yet no definite plan of operations beyond keeping his ears open for every scrap of information that might come into his way from any quarter, and doing all he knew to ingratiate himself with the Indians themselves; but the very first step he had proposed to take was to find out about this white man who was said to be living among them, and to discover what his objects were and how much he knew. Fortune had favoured him so far, and here he was shaking hands with the man himself, who had thus unexpectedly proved to be no other than his ancient enemy.
At the moment when the pair were thus exchanging signs of amity, the doorway was darkened by the form of a tall, swarthy, well-dressed Mexican. Mr. Backus hailed the new-comer instantly.
"Welcome, Don Nepomuceno. You come at a good hour. See the wonderful thing that has happened. This American señor that you were telling me of only yesterday, who lives with the Indians of Santiago, has turned out to be the very same man that plugged me in the great fight at Apache Cañon nine years ago. We were just shaking hands over it as you came in, and I've been showing him a little mark over my lungs that he gave me as a remembrancer." Mr. Backus was speaking in Spanish, and Manuelita was drinking in every syllable with intense interest.
"Well, if you come to that," returned Stephens, baring his left arm and displaying the scar of an old bullet wound between the elbow and wrist, "I can do ditto. Perhaps you didn't know that your bullet took me through the fleshy part of the arm here," and he pointed with his finger to the place where the ball had entered.
Don Nepomuceno Sanchez, who had seen fighting in the wars with the Navajos, and knew well what wounds were, came forward to examine the scars of either man with critical eyes. "Truly these are honourable scars," he said; "tell me about it, please, if you don't mind talking over old war times."
"Well, señor," said Backus, in his rapid, fluent Spanish, "it was like this: we were fighting there in the hills, on opposite sides, as of course you know; and naturally, being all frontiersmen on both sides, we advanced under cover as much as ever we could, firing as we got a chance. And so it came about that he and I, sudden-like, found ourselves quite close to one another in the brush, and we both fired as it might be at the same moment. He must have missed me clean that time, but according to the way he tells it, I must have plugged him right through that left arm of his; I didn't even know as I'd touched him though, for it never seemed to phase him, and we both of us set to reloading in a hurry, you bet. We both put in the powder, and both rammed down the bullets, and I had got a trifle ahead of him as I brought up my gun to the hip in order to have it ready to put on the cap. Wal', I'm jiggered if he didn't leave out the capping part of the business, and brought his piece straight up to his shoulder to draw a bead on me. You bet I just thought I knowed as I'd got the deadwood on him then. 'Got ye, Yank,' I called out, slipping the cap on my tube, 'ye haint capped yer gun.' 'Don't want to,' sez he; and whang-g-g! she went, and took me right here through the lung; and that was the last I ever knowed of anything for about a day and a half. You see, he had some kind of a gol-durned, stem-winding trick on his gun that did the capping for him, that I didn't know nothing about."