“Did they? Huh! Yes, I puttered around a bit at that job.”
“And I was told, too, that you are without fear—that you are a deadly gunman and have half a dozen bullet holes in your body.”
“Shucks, now! Who’s been talkin’ behind my back?”
“A man who lives at Spur told me. Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“That you are fearless?”
“Course it ain’t true. No man is fearless. Why, I’ve heard my own teeth rattlin’ like seed in a pod many a time. Look away over yonder at the mountains, Tony. See that deep scar? That’s Caldron Cañon—hottest place anywhere about here. An’ to the left of it is Buttonhook Bend, where they usta hold up the mail stage for G-string. Old road—abandoned now. And ahead, if ye’ll stand up, ye c’n see a square o’ green on the desert. Looks like an emerald in the middle of a khaki blanket, don’t it? That’s Box-R Ranch. Artesian wells—the only water between here and Wild Woman Springs. We’ll camp there.”
“Have you ever killed a man, Bill?” Joshua persisted.
“Who, me? Reminds me of ole Seth Spicer, that usta be up in Mendocino County in the big-timber belt. Fella ast ’im how many bear he’d killed. ‘When?’ says Seth. ‘Why, in yer life?’ says the fella. ‘In my whole life?’ says Seth. ‘Why, son, ye don’t expect me to recollect that, do ye? But I remember killin’ forty-seven one winter.’ But it ain’t as bad as that with me, Tony. I plugged a couple er more, I guess, in my time. But I don’t like to think about it. I’m powerful peaceful, me. That’s why I quit dep’ty-sheriffin’—don’t like to be packin’ a gat and smokin’ up the scenery any too well. That’s what I call plumb cultus—which, seein’ ye’re an Easterner, means ‘very bad.’ I like hosses an’ mules an’ trees an’ rocks—seems. Now tell me somethin’ more about Mars an’ the moon. I never get sick o’ that stuff. Is ole Mars inhabited, d’ye think?”
They camped at Box-R Ranch in the middle of the afternoon, and were away again before the sun was up. Next afternoon found the crawling worm that was the wagon train at Wild Woman Springs, which for years had been nothing but a watering station on the road to G-string, but which, since the coming of the nomad laborers, had become a frontier village boasting eleven houses. Every house was built of new, resinous pine and corrugated iron, and all sheltered gambling devices, rude bars, restaurant counters, bunks for the exhausted, and floors upon which to dance with the highly painted female denizens of the dives. Here were Scotty’s Place, The Palace Dance Hall, The Gem, Poker Dan’s, The Midway, Shoestring Charley’s, Cowboy Mary’s Place, The Forget-me-not, and others with names as suggestive and picturesque. A mile or more from Wild Woman Springs the outfit next morning left the desert and began the sharp ascent into the abrupt mountains. They reached Yucca Flat at noon, where they camped, and at two o’clock they entered upon the new road to G-string which had robbed California Bill of his six-up express and made of him a six-mule freighter.