“That there young woman is made out of watch-spring. Ther ain’t no stop to her. The more you pile on, the springier she gits. She was a mile an hour more to the train comin’ on. We didn’t have anything ugly happen until we got to the river. We cum down from Independence in the Floatin’ Pailis, No. 5. Some er them gamblin’ Pikes on board got a holt on the old man. He’s got his bead drawed on makin’ a pile again, and allows that gamblin’ with Pikes on a riverboat is one of the ways. He sot his white head down to the poker-table, and stuck thar, lookin’ sometimes sly as a kioty, sometimes mean and ugly as a gray wolf, and sometimes like a dead ephergee cut out er chalked wax. She nor I couldn’t do nothin’ with him. So I ambushed the gamblers, an twarn’t much arter midnight when I cotched ’em cheatin’ the old man. They couldn’t wait to take his pile slow an’ sure. So I called an indignation meetin’ and when I told the boys aboard I was Luke Armstrong from Oregon, they made me chairman, an’ guv me three cheers. I know’d it warn’t pollymentary for the chairman to make motions, but I motioned we shove the hul kit an boodle of the gamblers ashore on logs. ’Twas kerried, quite you-an-I-an-a-muss. So we guv ’em a fair show, with a big stick of cottonwood and a shingle apiece, and told ’em to navigate. The Cap’n slewed the Pallis’s head round and opened the furnace-doors to light ’em across, and they poot for shore, with everybody yellin’, and the Pallis blowin’ her whistle like all oudoors.”
“That’s the American method, Biddulph,” said I. “Lynch-law is nothing but the sovereign people’s law, executed without the intervention of the forms the people usually adopt for convenience.”
“With Armstrong for judge, it may do,” said Biddulph.
“After that,” continued Armstrong, “we got on well, except that the old man kep on the stiddy tramp up an’ down the boat, when he warn’t starin’ at the engyne, and Ellen couldn’t quiet him down. He got hash with her, too, and that ain’t like his nater. His nater is a sweet nater, with considerable weakenin’ into it. Well, when we got here, I paid their ticket plum through to York out of my own belt, and shoved a nest er dimes into the carpet-bag she asked me to buy her. But money wunt help the old man. I don’t believe anything but dyin’ will. I never would have let ’em go on alone ef I hadn’t had my own Ellen, and all my brother Bill’s big and little ones to keep drivin’ for. Now, boys, I git more ’n more oneasy the more I talk about ’em; but I ken put you on the trail, and if Mr. Brent is as sharp on trails where men is thick, as he is where men is scerce, and if she’s got a holt on him still, he’ll find ’em, and help ’em through.”
“That I will, Armstrong,” said Brent.
And next morning we three pursued our chase across the continent.
At New York another hurried note for me.
“We sail at once for home. My father cannot be at peace until he is in Lancashire again. Don’t forget me, dear friends. I go away sick at heart.
“Ellen Clitheroe.”
They left me,—the lover and the ex-lover,—and followed on over seas.