Now, taking this last case, what ground is there for supposing that I helped McCalmont's robbers? My movements all that night were innocent and unobtrusive travels. When Dog-gone Hawkins went off with his tenderfoot posse to hunt ghosts, I naturally slid out for home. So I met up with McCalmont, took charge of Cocky Brown's old buckboard, and delivered Curly at the back door of my cousins, the Misses Jameson. These ladies had to hear a whole lot which was pretty near true about poor Curly, and that consumed some time. Afterwards they got scared all to fits by rushes of horsemen, dynamite explosions, and such diverting incidents, ending with the arrival of Shorty Broach to have his prickles pulled. Through this disturbance I hid up with Curly in a cellar, and when there was peace drove off alone, with my saddled horse tied behind the buckboard. After an hour's search, I found the old Cœur d'Alene Mine shaft, and tipped the buckboard in, turning the team horses loose to graze their way back to La Soledad. My duties being all performed, I rode back just before dawn to my own home pasture at Las Salinas. There is the whole annals of a virtuous night, and yet these Grave City idiots defamed my character, which it makes me sick.
There's a habit which I caught from the old patrone at Holy Cross, the same being to have a cold bath. Our Arizona water is mostly too rich for bathing, being made of mud, cow-dung, alkali, and snakes; but at Las Salinas I owned a little spring, quite good for washing and such emergencies. After my bath I felt skittish, a whole lot younger than usual, full of aching memories about getting no supper last night, and pleased all to pieces to hear the breakfast-howl. These symptoms being observed, Custer proposed at once that I pay up the overdue wages, and Ute backed his play, grinning ugly. As for Monte, he was chipped in the face with a recent bullet, and squatted heaps thoughtful over his pork and beans.
"So you-all wants yo' pay?"
They agreed that they did, and Custer passed me the biggest cup for my coffee.
"All right, you tigers," says I, "after this grub-pile we'll cyclone into town and catch what I've got in the bank."
"I ain't no tiger this time," says Ute. "Why, yesterday I just rode up street to collect my washing, and the weather was a lot too prevalent."
"Rain?" says I. "You shorely didn't have rain!"
"Wall, it splashed up the dust all around me, it did that," says Ute, "but I sorter mistook it for bullets."
Then those boys allowed that we was getting some unpopular in town, but they had a gnawing awful pain in their pants pockets, and nothing would cure that but wages. They were sure good boys, and it made me ache inside to see them want.
"You boys," says I, "spose you collect these here wages yo'selves and make yo're own settlement?"