“No, we didn’t have no chance to rob him on the road, but we thought we could get into his cabin easy enough. So we tried it, Stevens climbin’ softly into the winder and I outside a-holdin’ the ladder. He’d got e’en-a ’most in, when bang went a gun and out tumbled Bill on top o’me. I thought we was both killed sure, but Bill picked himself up, and we lit out as though the Old Scratch himself was after us, which the same he mighty near was.”
“Didn’t hit Stevens, then?” Scotty inquired, with a grin which showed how well he enjoyed the comical side of the situation, and how little his conscience was touched by the villainy of the story.
“No, but it was an awful close call. Great Cæsar! But Max Brehm kin shoot, now you just bet!”
“Does Stevens know that the boys up the creek where he stopped t’other night are the same fellows?”
“I guess not; he aint said nothin’ about it.”
“If he did know, I reckon there’d be three of us as thought we owed the fine gentlemen a little debt of honor, which the same we hadn’t ought, on no account, to fail to pay—eh?”
Scotty’s leer and chuckle were as long as these slow and wicked words, and Bob’s squinty and bleary eye answered with a distorted, left-handed, evil grin of comprehension as he snarled out the laconic assent:
“Bet yer boots!”
And yet this is the kind of men whom so many well-meaning but romantically inclined eastern boys, knowing the far West only as they read of it in cheap books of a very poor sort, regard as heroes in disguise, and long to see and associate with. Thieves and gamblers at home are justly abhorred by them, yet the same man, perhaps, transplanted to the Rockies to escape the sheriff at home, becomes in these flashy books a sort of chivalrous knight whose uncouth ways only heighten his supposed virtues.
This is the worst of nonsense. A brave, heroic man does not show himself in this garb. The honest heroes of the Rockies never figure in dime novels and never will. They are not loud and “chinny” enough for that. They do not wear long hair, nor carry a big Kentucky rifle, nor appear and disappear in any mysterious Jack-in-the-box manner. They are not accustomed to kill six or eight “red-skinned varmints” at a single blow, and if ever they are engaged in Indian warfare, are far too wise to get so surrounded by a circle of Indians that they are obliged to take a standing leap over the heads of their foes, as did Eagle-eye or some other scout I once read of. If they tried to behave in this way, or to dress in story-book fashion, they would be hung or driven out by men of action who have no time to spend watching Bowery-museum foolishness, and whose business would be harmed by its display.