This tribute set a placid glow of satisfaction in Pete’s eyes.
“Take it from me, Geraldine,” he said, “you’re wise. But there ain’t no need for you to get scared of me so long as you play the game square and don’t try no fancy moves. Now show me where you got the loot stowed and show it quick. If you don’t—”
The threat was unfinished, for Geraldine nodded.
“Sure I’ll show it to you, Pete,” he said. “I know when I got a hand that’s worth playing, and I ain’t a guy to bet a measly pair of treys against a full house. Take a slant over there behind the rock and you’ll find it all.”
He indicated a pile of stones of all sizes which lay heaped in a corner. Pete backed toward it with his eye still upon the Ghost. A few kicks scattered the rocks and exposed several small bags. When he stirred these with his foot their weight was eloquent, and the gun-fighter’s smile broadened.
“Think of them tin-horns,” he said, “that offered all your pickings to the man that got you dead or alive, Geraldine!”
The Ghost sighed.
“Easy pickings,” he agreed. “No more strong-arm work for you, Pete!”
The jaw of Silver Pete set sternly again.
“Lead your hoss over here,” he said, “and help me stow this stuff in the saddlebags. And if you make a move to get the hoss between me and you—”
The Ghost grinned in assent, saddled his mount, and led him to Pete. Then in obedience to orders he unbuckled the slicker strapped behind the saddle and converted it into a strong bag which easily held the bags of loot. It made a small but ponderous burden, and he groaned with the effort as he heaved it up behind the saddle and secured it. Pete took the bridle and gestured at the Ghost with the revolver.
“Now git your hands up over your head agin, Geraldine,” he said, “and go out down the tunnel about three paces ahead of me.”
“Better let me take the torch,” suggested the Ghost, “it’ll show us the way.”
Pete grunted assent, and Geraldine, on his way toward the torch, stopped at the boulder to finish off his coffee. He turned to Pete with the cup poised at his lips.
“Say, Pete,” he said genially. “Anything wrong with a cup of coffee and a slice of bacon before we start back?”
“By God, Geraldine,” grinned the gun-fighter, “you’re a cool bird, but your game is too old!”
Nevertheless his very soul yearned toward the savor of bacon and coffee.
“Game?” repeated the Ghost, who caught the gleam of Pete’s eye. “What game? I say let’s start up the coffee-pot and the frying-pan. I can turn out flapjacks browner than the ones mother used to make, Pete!”
Pete drew a great breath, for the taste of his flour and water diet of the past few days was sour in his mouth.
“Geraldine,” he said at last, “it’s a go! But if you try any funny passes I ain’t going to wait for explanations. Slide out the chow!”
He rolled a large stone close to the boulder which served as dining-table to the bandit, and sat down to watch the preparations. The Ghost paid little attention to him, but hummed as he worked. Soon a fire snapped and crackled. The coffee can straddled one end of the fire; the frying-pan occupied the other. While the bacon fried he mixed self-rising pancake flour in a tin plate, using water from a tiny stream which trickled down from the rocks at one side of the cave, disappearing again through a fissure in the floor. Next he piled the crisp slices of bacon on a second tin plate and used the fried-out fat to cook the flapjacks.
“What I can’t make out,” said Geraldine, without turning to his guest, “is why you’d do this job for those yellow livers over in the town.”
Pete moved the tip of his tongue across his lips, for his mouth watered in anticipation.
“Why, you poor nut,” he answered compassionately, “I ain’t working for them. I’m working for the stuff that’s up there behind the saddle.”
Geraldine turned on him so suddenly that Pete tightened his grip upon the revolver, but the Ghost merely stared at him.
“Say,” he grinned at last, “have you got a hunch they’ll really let you walk off with all that loot?”
The face of the gunman darkened.
“I sure think they’ll let me,” he said with a sinister emphasis. “That was the way they talked.”
Geraldine sighed in apparent bewilderment, but turned back to his work without further comment. In a few moments he rose with the plates of bacon and flapjacks piled on his left arm and the can of coffee in his right hand. He arranged them on the boulder before Silver Pete, and then sat on his heels on the other side of the big stone. The gun-fighter laid his revolver beside his tin cup and attacked the food with the will of ten. Yet even while he ate the eye which continually lingered on the Ghost noted that the latter stared at him with a curious and almost pitying interest. He came to a pause at last, with a piece of bacon folded in a flapjack.
“Look here,” he said, “just what were you aiming at a while ago?”
Geraldine shrugged his shoulders and let his eye wander away as though the subject embarrassed him.
“Damn it!” said Pete with some show of anger, “don’t go staring around like a cross-eyed girl. What’s biting you?”
“It ain’t my business,” he said. “As long as I’m done for, I don’t care what they do to you.”
He stopped and drummed his finger-tips against his chin while he scowled at Pete.
“If it wasn’t for you I’d be a free bird,” he went on bitterly. “Do you think I’m goin’ to weep any of the salt and briny for you, what?” \
“Wha’d’ya mean?” Pete blurted. “D’ya mean to say them quitters are going to double-cross me?”
The Ghost answered nothing, but the shrug of his shoulders was eloquent. Pete started up with his gun in his hand.
“By God, Geraldine,” he said, “you ain’t playin’ fair with me! Look what I done for you. Any other man would of plugged you the minute they seen you, but here I am lettin’ you walk back safe and sound—treating you as if you was my own brother, almost!”
He hesitated a trifle over this simile. Legend told many things of what Silver Pete had done to his own brother. Nevertheless, Geraldine met his stare with an eye full as serious.
“I’m going to do it,” he said in a low voice, as if talking to himself. “Just because you come out here and caught me like a man there ain’t no reason I should stand by and see you made a joke of. Pete, I’m going to tell you!”
Pete settled back on his stone with his fingers playing nervously about the handle of his gun.
“Make it short, Geraldine,” he said with an ominous softness. “Tell me what the wall-eyed cayuses figure on doin’!”
The Ghost studied him as if he found some difficulty in opening his story in a delicate manner.
“Look here, Pete,” he said at last. “There ain’t no getting out of it that some of the things you’ve done read considerable different from Bible stories.”
“Well?” snarled Silver Pete.
“Well,” said the Ghost, “those two-card Johnnies over to town know something of what you’ve done, and they figure to double-cross you.”
He paused, and in the pause Pete’s mouth twitched so that his teeth glinted yellow.
“Anybody