The noise inside had dropped quickly to stillness. You could scarcely catch the sound of talk. Our caboose was clicking comfortably westward, rail after rail, mile upon mile, while night was beginning to rise from earth into the clouded sky.
“I wonder if they have sent a search party forward to hunt Schoffner?” said the Virginian. “I think I'll maybe join their meeting.” He opened the door upon them. “Kind o' dark hyeh, ain't it?” said he. And lighting the lantern, he shut us out.
“What do yu' think?” said Scipio to me. “Will he take them to Sunk Creek?”
“He evidently thinks he will,” said I. “He says he will, and he has the courage of his convictions.”
“That ain't near enough courage to have!” Scipio exclaimed. “There's times in life when a man has got to have courage WITHOUT convictions—WITHOUT them—or he is no good. Now your friend is that deep constitooted that you don't know and I don't know what he's thinkin' about all this.”
“If there's to be any gun-play,” put in the excellent Shorty, “I'll stand in with him.”
“Ah, go to bed with your gun-play!” retorted Scipio, entirely good-humored. “Is the Judge paying for a carload of dead punchers to gather his beef for him? And this ain't a proposition worth a man's gettin' hurt for himself, anyway.”
“That's so,” Shorty assented.
“No,” speculated Scipio, as the night drew deeper round us and the caboose click-clucked and click-clucked over the rail joints; “he's waitin' for somebody else to open this pot. I'll bet he don't know but one thing now, and that's that nobody else shall know he don't know anything.”
Scipio had delivered himself. He lighted a cigarette, and no more wisdom came from him. The night was established. The rolling bad-lands sank away in it. A train-hand had arrived over the roof, and hanging the red lights out behind, left us again without remark or symptom of curiosity. The train-hands seemed interested in their own society and lived in their own caboose. A chill wind with wet in it came blowing from the invisible draws, and brought the feel of the distant mountains.