I saw the trader turning gray with horror. Rage would come next against the partner who had so betrayed him. So our detective would use Shifty Lane for the capture of Low Lived Joe. The trader made no sound, no comment, but turned away, bent down and looking very old, to collapse in his rawhide chair beside the stove. His squaw came out and beckoned that supper was ready.
After supper it was my job to unsaddle, water, feed and bed the horses, but I had a sort of muddled feeling about Low Lived Joe and his partner, the Kid. They were coming, and we wanted to see them come, but if they found police horses with banged tails in the stables they would quit coming and pass the house severally by instead of leaving cards. Moreover, they might be in need of remounts, and borrow our horses, leaving us all afoot. So I tied the horses to the fence behind the house, and made them comfy there. As for the saddles, I lugged them into the house.
And if I was any judge of blackguards, old Shifty needed watching. So I sat in the doorway for my evening pipe, trying to keep awake. From where I squatted I could see the lamp-lit living-room, as well as the moonlit yard. Lane and his squaw took the lamp with them into the little inner room where they slept, pulling its doors to, until the latch caught on its hasp with a click. The moon poured treasure of silver light into the living-room of that evil house.
McBugjuice lugged over his saddle and spread his cloak and blanket across the inner door. On the sneck he hung his serge, his waistcoat, and his boots which would fall on his head and wake him if any one tried to get out of the bedroom. In his elephantine way he had a certain slyness—that detective. He turned to my brother, who sat crouched beside the stove.
"Ah, here you are, Brat. Share my bed, eh, what?"
My brother hobbled across to thank him for his kindness.
"Promise not to run, eh?" He was belting on his side-arms for the night. Brat glanced at me, and I made "Don't" in the sign talk.
The fat detective grunted dismally, then took his hand-cuffs from the pocket of his vest, put the key back in the pocket and shackled Brat's right wrist to his own left. So they turned in—"Indeed, ah! Doosed chilly, eh, what?"
Meanwhile, the ever-dutiful Buckie fussed around in the yard, taking ostentatious precautions by way of setting me a good example. He passed the loop of his rope around a plank of the stable door, stretched its fifty-foot length to a point abreast of the house, then made the rope-end fast to the collar strap of his cloak, and lay down in his blanket with the cloak pulled over him. The only things left in the closely-guarded stable were my cloak and blanket, but when I said so, he was most ungrateful. He told me he was a corporal and my superior officer, with more to the same effect. He flounced across my outstretched legs in the doorway to get inside the house and bed down warm by the stove. But, however funny, he was never vulgar, never used coarse language to relieve harsh feelings like a common trooper. He continued to set me a good example and teach me official language, until his muttered declamation tailed off into a snore. I strolled across to take his telltale rope off the stable door, lest it should warn the robbers.
On my way to the stable, I noticed that Shifty had his lamp alight behind a red blind in his bedroom window—a danger-signal that. When I came back from a good-night talk with the horses, that lamp was still alight, but the red blind was gone. Shifty had signaled, "All clear. Police gone away, come in!"