They were quite sure that he had not. He had, they admitted, set up a round or two, but they were not the boys to impose upon a stranger, and in proof of this several of them asked the hotel-keeper what he had received from them. Then Weston turned to the latter.
“Now,” he said, “we’ll try to straighten this thing out, but I’ve no intention of being victimized. It’s quite clear that the boys don’t seem in a humor to permit that either.”
“You’ve got us solid,” one of them assured him. “All you have to do is to sail right ahead. Burn up the blame hotel. Sling him out of the window. Anything you like.”
“Well,” said Weston, addressing the hotel-keeper, “while I don’t know what your tariff is, it’s quite evident to me, after what the others have said, that my partner couldn’t very well have spent more than five or six dollars. We’ll call it eight to make more certain, and I’ll pacify him if you’ll hand me twelve.”
“Twelve dollars,” sang the axman, “or the horse! Bring them out!”
“It’s worse than holding up a train,” complained the hotel-keeper. “Still, I’ll part with it for the pleasure of getting rid of you.”
He did so; and when Weston, who pocketed the money, inquired when the next east-bound train left, one of the others recollected that it was in rather less than half an hour. Some of them got up with a little difficulty, and Grenfell looked at Weston deprecatingly.
“You mustn’t hurry me,” he observed, “my knees have given out again.”
They set out in a body, two of them assisting Grenfell, who smiled at the men assembled in the unpaved street to witness their departure. There were eight of them altogether, including the man who still carried the ax, which, it transpired later, belonged to the hotel-keeper. The soft darkness fell, and the white mists crawled up the hillside as, laughing harshly, they plodded through the little wooden town. They were wanderers and vagabonds, but they were also men who had faced the stinging frost on the ranges and the blinding snow. They had held their lives lightly as they flung the tall wooden bridges over thundering cañons, or hewed room for the steel track out of their black recesses with toil incredible. Flood and frost, falling trees, and giant-powder that exploded prematurely, had as yet failed to crush the life out of them, and, after all, it is, perhaps, men of their kind who have set the deepest mark upon the wilderness.