"Well," said Stephens, "we'll soon see what he looks like, anyhow, for here we are at the store." He lifted the child down from the saddle, and the two girls at once went inside while he tied up his mule to a hitching-post that was set in front of the door.
After he had finished doing so, he followed them in; and stepping across the threshold he was instantly aware of a surprised glance of half-recognition darted at him by a man who stood behind the counter, where he was showing some cotton prints to three shawl-clad Mexican women. "Mornin', mister," said the storekeeper, in English. "Excuse me if I keep you waitin' a minute while I 'tend on these ladies."
"All right," answered Stephens briefly, and he leaned quietly back against the mud-plastered adobe wall till the other should be at leisure. He ran his eye over the shelves, which, like those of most Mexican country village shops, contained a varied assortment that ranged from tenpenny nails to the tin saints whose shrines decorate even the poorest hovel in New Mexico. His gaze reverted to the storekeeper, who was a tall, dark, spare man, with a clean-shaven face, a bilious complexion, and snaky black hair. This, then, was Mr. Thomas Backus, an American citizen married to a Mexican wife. She had certainly helped him to a fluent command of her mother tongue, and Stephens could not help envying the easy way in which he poured out lavish praises of his new goods to the customers whom he was serving. The purchases of these ladies were presently completed, but they still remained in the store carrying on an animated conversation with Don Nepomuceno's daughter, who had joined them in discussing the patterns they had chosen.
"And now what can I do for you?" inquired the storekeeper, looking Stephens in the face as he turned to him.
"Surely I have met this man before, but where?" said Stephens to himself, while he answered Mr. Backus's question by remarking politely, "Oh, I'm not in any hurry, thank you. Won't you serve this young lady first?" and with a slight gesture he indicated Manuelita, who was still absorbed in the muslins of her friends. Rack his memory as he would, he could not recall the occasion when he and Backus had met previously, yet he felt almost certain it had occurred.
"Why certainly, certainly," returned the storekeeper cheerily; "so long as you don't mind waitin' a few minutes," and he turned to the girl.
"Then what may I have the pleasure of being allowed to show you, senorita?"
"Two peloncillos, Don Tomas, if you will be so kind," answered the young lady; and two conical loaves of the brown Mexican sugar so popular in the Territory were accordingly wrapped in paper and handed over to her; but it was manifest that the pretty frocks were what were nearest to her heart, and she and her three friends still continued to discuss the subject with all the ardour of connoisseurs.
Meantime Stephens became more and more convinced in his own mind not only that this was not his first encounter with Backus, but that the latter was also engaged in watching him as closely as possible. He chose, however, not to call attention to this by any inquiry when at length the storekeeper announced himself ready to wait upon him, contenting himself with simply explaining the object of his visit to the store.
"I just wanted to see," he said quietly, "if you happened to have a parcel here for me by the stage to-day from Santa Fe. Stephens is my name, John Stephens. It's a parcel from Spiegelberg's," he added explanatorily, "that I'm looking for; a small, heavy parcel; it's Winchester cartridges."
"Oh yes, they're here; the stage driver left 'em for you all right,"
said Mr. Backus promptly, reaching down for them under the counter and handing them over. "And I think there's some mail matter too for you; I'll just see"; with which remark he disappeared into the little post-office that was boarded off at one end of the store, returning from there presently with some papers in his hand. "I reckon this letter's for you"; he read out the address with the laboured enunciation of a man of limited education. "To Mr. John Stephens, living among the Pueblo Indians, Santiago, N.M."
"Yes, that'll be for me," said Stephens, putting out his hand for it.
"I reckoned as how you must be the man as soon as I seed you come in,"
answered Backus, handing over the letter along with a newspaper and a postal packet, "'cos by what I hear thar' aint no other American living in this valley."
"Just so," assented the prospector; "I'm the only one there is anywhere around here. I've been playing a lone hand down in these parts all winter. For six months I haven't spoken to an American except the stage-driver."
It was a relief to him to talk English to anyone again after so long an interval, although he was not exactly prepossessed by Mr. Backus's looks, nor by the only thing he knew for certain about him, namely, that he had gone and married a Mexican wife, a decidedly eccentric thing for an American to do, in Stephens's eyes. But the mere sound of his native language again was music in his ears, even though it were spoken by a man as illiterate as the storekeeper. For, compared to the other, Backus was illiterate. And it was a thing worth noting about Stephens, who had had the advantage of a high-school education, that though he now freely made use of the rude, vigorous colloquialism of the West,--so much so, indeed, that he talked to himself in it,--yet he could drop it in a moment on occasion. Before a stranger for whom he felt an instinctive distaste, he at once became formal, and his language took on a precision and his tone a punctiliousness that were foreign to his more familiar discourse. As he would have said of himself, "If I don't cotton to a man at once, I always feel like putting on a lot of frills."
"You bin long in these parts?" inquired Mr. Backus carelessly.
"About a year now in New Mexico," replied Stephens; "but I've been in this Western country a good deal longer than that. I'm not a tenderfoot, exactly, if I may say so; I didn't come to this country for my health."
Many men whose lungs are affected have hoped to shake off their dread malady by breathing the pure, thin, dry air of Colorado and New Mexico.
The hardy Western pioneer pities the consumptive patient; he succours him freely in distress; and, above all things, he hates to be mistaken for one himself. Stephens was determined that his fellow-countryman should be under no misapprehension on this point.
"No," laughed Mr. Backus lightly, "nor you don't look much like one of them pore health-seekers neither. Say, though," he continued, more warily, "you'll excuse my axin', but was you never in New Mexico before this last year?"
"No," replied Stephens--"that is--yes, I should have said," correcting himself, "I was once, but only for a short time, and that was some years ago, and not in this part of the Territory." He shifted his position against the adobe wall a little, and laid down on the counter in a casual sort of way the parcel and the mail matter which he was holding, as if to indicate that he was ready for a long chat. In reality he was setting his hands free in case he might possibly need to use them. To be at all closely questioned about one's past life by an absolute stranger acts on the experienced Western man as a danger signal. He noted the intense glow in Backus's eyes, and as he did so he grew conscious of a strange sense of doubleness in his own brain, as if all this scene had been enacted once before, and he ought to know what was coming next. He shifted his waist-belt and left his thumbs resting lightly on the buckle in front; it was a perfectly natural thing to do, and yet it left his right hand within six inches of the trusty Colt's revolver at his hip.
Assuredly Stephens was no tenderfoot; he was watching every motion of Backus out of the corner of his eye.
"Say, stranger," began the latter, leaning forward over the counter, and speaking low and clear, "no offence, but I want to ax you a certain question. It's a little sudden-like, but I have a reason for it; allers no offence, you understand?"
"You can ask me any question you have a mind to, Mr. Backus," said Stephens coolly. "Of course, whether I answer it or not is my choice."
Mr. Backus might be his fellow-countryman, but he must learn not to be presuming. Almost unconsciously to himself his tone hardened. Stephens could stand the easy familiarity of races that were not his own, and treat the Indians of Santiago with a friendliness that was all the more kindly for his own underlying sense of superiority, but for an American to treat him lightly was another matter. The pride and reserve that had grown up in solitude revolted at this man's inquisitiveness.
"Wal' then, stranger," continued Backus, with an apologetic manner that was due to the other's change of voice, "allers, as I said before, meanin' no offence, did you ever happen to kill a man?"
Manuelita, though apparently absorbed in a rose-sprigged muslin, caught a note in the Texan's tone that aroused her vigilance. She knew no English, but her quick brain divined that when he asked, "Did you ever kill a man?" he was putting no common question.
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 Canon?"
The words "Apache Canon" 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 Canon, 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 Canon? 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.