"Well, what of that?"
"He has taken my place—shackled himself to the sergeant. He'll get a year's hard labor and dismissed from the force!"
"Serve him right!"
The youngster's voice broke beyond all control. "A La Mancha," he wailed, "the La Mancha disgracefully expelled! He'll shoot himself as sure as— We've got to save him before the sergeant wakes. Got-Wet can go to blazes!"
My medicine was working famously.
It is only on looking back that one sees events in their sequence, their ordered movement toward the inevitable end. I changed places with Brat, expecting to be in irons for half an hour or so, until we went on duty to catch the robbers. Brat, being a gentleman, could not possibly leave me in the lurch to save a dozen Got-Wets. My only idea was to show him his own heart. I never dreamed of the far-away years to come when I should owe my life to Brat's lifelong gratitude.
Meanwhile, he had Buckie roused to a royal rage, fully alert, vindictively chucking wood into the stove. The stove was opposite to the open door, its glare would light the room for our job of trapping robbers. It would lure the robbers in with hopes of a rousing supper, and blind their eyes as they entered. Yes, my scheme worked to perfection. Buckie was rousing the detective, who sat up drawling, "Have I the bleedin' rats, or am I sobah?" Then he saw me, and asked what the deuce I was playing at. I told him the robbers were coming, so he had better loose me. He unlocked the handcuffs—indeed, ah!
Log walls, hewn planks, black beams hotly aglow with restless, flickering lights from the stove; cool still moonbeams raining to sapphire pools upon the floor; the silence, like some great visitant angel of the plains folding his wings in the doorway; our hearts beating like drums as we stood listening: then the soft pulsation of horses quivered underfoot, a quick, deep, throbbing chord of hoof-beats from the bridge, a trampling close at hand, the tinkle of a spur.
A youngster clattered in with trailing spurs, dragging a sack which crashed and rattled over the doorstep. "Rouse out!" he shouted. "On yer banglers, Shifty! Where's yer squaw? There's antelope venison coming!"
The door swung to behind him, Buckie whipped the gun from his slung holster, McBugjuice whispered, "Shut your mouth or I'll drop you!" and I clapped the handcuffs on Alabama Kid, while Brat dragged off the sack load of Beauclerc's plate.