"Do you know how your friend came by these?"
"I do," said I; but I thought to give this quiet man a Roland for his Oliver, seeing he was so much of a sphinx, and I said no more save that.
He smiled.
"Quite right," said he. "And did you leave your friend well?" he asked, smiling on me in a fatherly fashion.
"In the best of health," I said.
"I see I have to remit to Santa Fe," said he. "He did not say where he was going after that, did he? I can hardly expect him to stay there long."
"No, he did not say," I replied.
"Ah! Doubtless I shall hear of him when he thinks necessary," and he bowed me out and shook hands with me at the door.
The second item that still remains to be told is of my opening of the second letter that Apache Kid gave me. There was no difficulty in finding the address of his "people" which this contained. But if the address astonished me, I was certainly less astonished than deeply moved, when, by watching the residence, I found that his mother still lived,—a stately, elderly lady, with silver hair.
By careful inquiries, and by some observation, I found that there were two sisters also in the house, and once I saw all three out shopping in Princes Street, very tastefully but plainly dressed, and it struck me to the heart, with a sadness I cannot tell, to think that here was I, who could step up to them and say: "Madam, your son yet lives; ladies, your brother is alive," and yet to know that my lips were sealed; that for some reason Apache Kid could never again come home.