They had heard nothing of Apaches out on the war trail, but when I told what I knew, they came glad, on the dead run, their waggons and pony herd following. We found the Britisher digging graves for three dead men, and looking apt to require a fourth for his own use.
"Er—good evening," says he, and I began to wonder why I'd sweated myself so hot to rescue an iceberg.
"Gentlemen," says he to the boys, "you find some er—coffee ready beside the fire, and afterwards, if you please, we will bury my dead."
The boys leaned over in their saddles, wondering at him, but the lord's cool eye looked from face to face, and we had to do what he said. He was surely a great chief, that Lord Balshannon.
The men who had fallen a prey to the Apaches were two teamsters and a Mexican, all known to these Bar Y riders, and they were sure sorry. But more than that they enjoyed this shorthorn, this tenderfoot from the east who could stand off an outfit of hostile Indians with his lone rifle. They saw he was wounded, yet he dug graves for his dead, made coffee for the living, and thought of everything except himself. After coffee we lined up by the graves to watch the bluff he made at funeral honours. Lord Balshannon was a colonel in the British Army, and he stood like an officer on parade reading from a book. His black hair was touched silver, his face was strong, hard, manful, and his voice quivered while he read from the little book—
"For I am a stranger with Thee,
And a sojourner as all my fathers were;
O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength
Before I go hence, and am no more seen."
I reckon that there were some of us sniffing as though we had just caught a cold, while we listened to that man's voice, and saw the loneliness of him. Afterwards Dick Bryant, the Bar Y foreman, walked straight up to Balshannon.
"Britisher," said he, "you may be a sojourner, and we hopes you are, a whole lot, but there's no need to be a stranger. Shake."
So they shook hands, and that was the beginning of a big friendship. Then Balshannon turned to the crowd, and looked slowly from face to face of us.
"Gentlemen," he said kind of feeble, and we saw his face go grey while he spoke, "I'm much obliged to you all for er—for coming. It seems, indeed, ah—that my little son Jim and I have made friends and er—neighbours. I'm sorry that you should find my camp in such aw—in such a beastly mess, but there's some fairly decent whisky in this nearest waggon, and er—" the man was reeling, and his eyes seemed blind, "when we get to my new ranche at Holy Cross I—I hope you'll—friends—aw—and——"