Let us follow this visitor and find out more of his habits and associates. It is scarcely fair to condemn a man forever out of a single day’s experience.
A DIME NOVEL HERO.
CHAPTER VII.
A DIME NOVEL HERO.
When their unpleasant guest departed from the cabin of our heroes, he marched straight down to Bob’s cabin in the village and there found himself heartily welcomed. Old Bob introduced him to Scotty as “Bill Stevens—a fellow who knows the San Juan like his own barn-yard.” Scotty said he was glad to see him, and no doubt he was, for he felt in need of friends, and this new man, as a chum of Bob’s and evidently training in the same band, would of course become an ally of his. This Scotty needed; though he had not been sent out of town a second time, and was permitted to lounge around the El Dorado and to sit at the gambling-tables, or join the story-telling circles at the public corral, he saw that most of the men whom he met were far from cordial toward him, and that his earnest efforts to be agreeable were of small avail in making friends. It did not suit his plans to resent this, nor to leave the camp in search of a more congenial community; so he put up with the unpopularity as well as he could. It galled him, however, and caused him to lay up hatred rather than love toward the whole population of the valley.
As soon as Bill Stevens’ back was turned, Scotty took occasion to inquire somewhat about him. Bob really knew little of his history, except that, as he said, they had been “pards” in a little game some time previous, after which Stevens had thought it prudent to go away. Scotty pressed Old Bob to know the particulars of this partnership enterprise, but Bob declined at first to tell them. Finally, however, he exclaimed:
“Well, I s’pose you might as well know, its only another point against them dod-rotted young swells up the creek. The fact is, when Brehm and his partner lived down in that there cabin ’cross the bridge yonder, Bushwick went off to Denver. By’n bye he came back with a heap o’ cash—don’ know how much—mebbe a thousand or so. ’Bout that time Bill came over to see me from t’other side the range, and I was telling about it, you know. Well Bill, he made out ’s how Bushwick didn’t have no right to the money no how, havin’ stole it from somebody else by some kind of lawyer’s game, and ’twas as much ours as his’n or anybody’s, which of course that is true, providin’ he got it by swindlin’, which like enough he did, you know.”
“So you and Bill held him up, did you?”