"Well, about this here Lost Cabin Mine," he said. "There's a little, short, stubby fellow that you maybe have noticed around here, with a pock-marked face,—Mike Canlan, they call him. He was up to Tremont putting in assessment on a claim he has in the mountains there away, and he was comin' along back by the trail on the mountains that runs kind o' parallel with the stage road, but away up on the hills, and there he picks up a feller nigh dead,—starved to death, pretty nigh. Mike gets him up on his pack-horse and comes along slow down through the mountain till he hits the waggon road from the Poorman. There a team from the Poorman Mine makes up on him. That there fellow, Apache Kid, was drivin' the team, and along with him was Larry Donoghue, a partner o' his, with another team. They had been haulin' up supplies for one of the stores, and was comin' down light. They offer to help Canlan down with the dying man, seein' as how the hoss was gettin' pretty jaded with all Canlan's outfit on its back, and this here man, too, tied on, and wabbling about mighty weak."
Laughlin broke off here to nod his head sagaciously. "From what has transpired since, I guess Canlan was kind o' sorry he fell in with them two, and I reckon he wondered if there was no kind of an excuse he could put up for rejecting their offer o' service and continuin' to pack the feller down himself. Anyways, they got the man into the Apache's waggon, and my house bein' the nighest to the waggon road and the mountain, they pulled up at my door and we all carries the fellow up to a room. I was at the door. Canlan was sitting on the bed-foot. Apache Kid and Larry Donoghue was laying him out comf'able. The fellow groans and mumbles something, and Canlan gave a bit of a start forward, and says he: 'There, there now, that 'll do; you 've got him up all right. I reckon that's all that's wanted. You can go for a doctor, now, if you want to help at all.' There was something kind o' strained in his voice, and I think Apache Kid noticed it the way he looks round. 'Why,' he says, 'I think, seein' as you,' and he stops and looks Canlan plumb in the eye, 'seein' as you found the man, you had better fetch the doctor and finish your job. My partner and I will sit by him till the doctor comes.' Canlan looked just a little bit rattled when Apache Kid says, lookin' at the man in the bed: 'He seems to have got a kind o' a knock on the head here.' 'Yes,' says Canlan, 'I got him where he had fallen down. I reckon he got that punch then.' And then Apache Kid looks at Larry Donoghue, and Larry looks at him, and they both smile, and Canlan cries out: 'Oh, if that's what you think, why I 'll go for the doctor without any more ado!'"
Laughlin paused, and, "You savvy the idea?" he asked.
"Not quite," I said.
He tapped me on the knee, and, bending forward, said: "Don't you see, Apache Kid and Larry hed no suspicions o' foul play at all, but they was wanting to get alone in the room with the feller, and this was just Apache's bluff to get a move on Canlan. Canlan was no sooner gone than Apache Kid asks me to fetch a glass o' spirits. It was only thinkin' it over after that I saw through the thing; anyhow, I come down for the glass, and when I got up, derned if they did n't hev the man propped up in bed, and him mumblin' away and them bendin' over him listening eager to him. They gave him the liquor, and he began talking a trifle stronger, and took two-three deep gusts o' breath. Then he began mumblin' again."
Mr. Laughlin looked furtively round and then, leaning forward again, thrust his neck forward and with infinite disgust in his voice said: "And damn me if that wife o' mine did n't come to the stair-end right then and start yellin' on me to come down."
Laughlin shook his head sadly. "Seems her derned old parrot was shoutin' for food and as it had all give out she wants me to go down to the store for some more. But I must say that she had just come in herself and did n't know nothin' about the business that was goin' on upstairs. When Canlan and the doctor did arrive and go up the fellow was dead—sure thing—dead as—dead as—" he searched for the simile without which he could not speak for long. "Dead as God!" he said in a horrible whisper, raising his grey eyebrows.
I shuddered somehow at the words, and yet in such a red-hot, ungodly place as Baker City I could almost understand the phrase. There was another pause after that and then Laughlin cleared his throat again and held up a lean finger in my face.
"There's where the place comes in," said he, "where you says 'the plot thickens,' for I 'm a son of a gun if word did n't come down next day that the fellers up at the Poorman Mine had picked up just such another dead-beat. This here corpse of which I bin tellin' you was indemnified after as having been in company with the other. But the man the Poorman boys picked up was jest able to tell them that he had seen the lights o' their bunk-house and was trying to make for it. Told them that he and two partners had struck it rich in the mountains, pow'ful rich, he said, and hed all been so fevered like that they let grub run out. Then they went out looking for something to shoot up and could n't find a thing. One of 'em went off then to fetch supplies, lost his way in them mountains, wanders about nigh onto a week—and hits their own camp ag'in at the end o' that time. Isn't it terrible? You'd think that after striking it luck jest turned about and hed a laugh at 'em for a change. They comes rushin' on him, the other two, expecting grub— Grub nothing! He was too derned tired to budge then, and so the other two sets out then— This fellow what the Poorman boys picked up was doin' his level best to tell 'em where the place was, for the sake of his partner left there, and in the middle of his talk he took a fit and never came out of it. All they know is that there was a cabin built at the place. That's the story for you."
"But what about the man who was brought down here; did he not leave any indication?"