"I?" he said. "Oh, I have just pulled myself together by sheer will-power. I have a hole in my side, filled up with resin. But that's a mere nothing. It 'll hold till we get back to civilisation again, or else be healed by then. Thank goodness for our late friend's shaky hand." And at these words it struck me, thinking, I suppose, how narrowly Apache had missed death, that Canlan might be alive despite his fall.
Apache read the thought before I spoke. He nodded his head reassuringly, and said:
"We are safe from him. He will trouble us no more. I have seen, to make sure."
"I think I should be ashamed of myself," said I, "for giving in like this."
"Nonsense," said he. "You were sick enough last night, but you are all right now. Could you eat a thin, crisp pancake?—I won't say flapjack. A thin, crisp pancake?"
I thought I could, and found that he had a few ready against such a return to my normal. As I ate, he meditated. I could see that, though he spoke gaily enough, there was something on his mind. He looked at me several times, and then at last: "Do you think you could stand bad news?" he asked.
I looked up with inquiry.
"It's a fizzle, this!" he snapped; and then he told me that sure enough the three original owners of the mine had "struck something." But the ore, according to Apache Kid's opinion of the samples lying in the cabin, was of such a quality that it would not repay anyone to work the place.
"O," he said, "if there was a smelter at the foot of the mountains, I don't say it would n't repay to rig up a bucket-tramway and plant; it's not so very poor looking stuff; but to make a waggon road, or even a pack-road, from here, say, to Kettle River Gap or even to Baker City and use the ordinary road there for the further transportation—no, it would n't pay. We might hold this claim all our lives and the country might never open up this way while we lived; and what would we be the better for it all?"
It mattered little to me. My soul was sick of it all.