“He come up behind with a knife. I saw his shadow, and I give it to him across the temple with a bit of scrap-iron laying on the little pier. He died two days later.
“One was twenty years gone now. They called him DeVine, and he was the crookedest man that ever put on white man’s clothes. It began with cards, and ended with him trying to do me on a mine. He knowed when I had caught him, and pulled his gun first. He missed me about six inches, and we wasn’t standing more than seven feet apart....
“And one was something more than eight years ago. He was no account. He murdered old Tom Richards. Tom was a pardner of mine. Tom’s body wasn’t cold yet when the man as murdered him went to plead his case with the Great Judge.”
Again the deep stillness of the mountains shut in about them. Young Dick Farley stared curiously into his partner’s face, wondering. And since the ways of the cities of the earth were not forgotten by him, the ways of men, where judges and courts and written laws were not, were new to him—he shivered slightly.
For two years he and the man who was speaking quietly of the murderous killing of men, and the killing of men in retribution, had lived together in that close fraternity for which the West has coined the word “pardnership” from a colder word; and never had he heard old Johnny Watson talk as he did tonight. And still he waited for the man to go on, knowing that there was some reason for this unasked confidence.
“There’s some things a man can explain,” went on Watson. “There’s a Lord’s sight more he can’t. When you’ve lived as long as I have, Dickie, alone a big three-fourths of the time, maybe you’ll be like me and not try to look under things for the why so long’s you know the what.
“I know now you and me are on the likeliest trail I ever put one foot down in front of the other on. And I know it’s my last trail! It’s ‘So long’ for you and me, pardner. And I’m going to know real soon what’s on the other side of things.”
Dick Farley sought a light rejoinder with which to meet an old miner’s superstition, but he could find no words. So again there was silence between them until Watson once more spoke:
“I killed them three men in fair fight, Dickie, and with the right o’ things on my side. And it ain’t ever once bothered me. And now the funny part of it—I ain’t so much as thought of one of them men for a month.
“You know we got too much to think about, you and me, with the trail leading us straight to more gold—our gold—than would sink a battle-ship. And today? Well, when the sun shines in my eyes, and I wake up slow, I’m kinder dazed for a little while, and while I can’t get my bearings I’m back in the South Sea country with Ben, the sailorman. Just as plain as I’m seeing you now, Dick, I saw him. Twisted thumb and all—and I hadn’t thought about that twisted thumb from that day over thirty years ago until this very morning! And all day I’ve been walking first with Ben and then with Flash DeVine, and then with Perry Parker, as did for poor old Tom Richards.”