The sun had just gone down. There was a red wrangle of angry vapors over the mounds of mountain westward. A brace of travellers from Salt Lake way rode up and lighted their camp fire near ours. More society in that lonely world. Two families, with two sets of Lares and Penates.
Not attractive society. They were a sinister-looking couple of hounds. A lean wolfish and a fat bony dog.
One was a rawboned, stringy chap,—as gaunt, unkempt, and cruel a Pike as ever pillaged the cabin, insulted the wife, and squirted tobacco over the dead body of a Free State settler in Kansas. The other was worse, because craftier. A little man, stockish, oily, and red in the face. A jaunty fellow, too, with a certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire.
They were well mounted, both. The long ruffian rode a sorrel, big and bony as himself, and equally above such accidents as food or no food. The little villain’s mount was a red roan, a Flathead horse, rather naggy, but perfectly hardy and wiry,—an animal that one would choose to do a thousand miles in twenty days, or a hundred between sunrise and sunset. They had also two capital mules, packed very light. One was branded, “A. & A.”
Distrust and disgust are infallible instincts. Men’s hearts and lives are written on their faces, to warn or charm. Never reject that divine or devilish record!
Brent read the strangers, shivered at me, and said, sotto voce, “What a precious pair of cut-throats! We must look sharp for our horses while they are about.”
“Yes,” returned I, in the same tone; “they look to me like Sacramento gamblers, who have murdered somebody, and had to make tracks for their lives.”
“The Cassius of the pair is bad enough,” said Brent; “but that oily little wretch sickens me. I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters’ House. Faugh! I feel as if a snake were crawling over me, when I look at him.”
“They are not very welcome neighbors to our friends here.”
“No. Roughs abhor brutes as much as you or I do. Roughs are only nature; brutes are sin. I do not like this brutal element coming in. It portends misfortune. You and I will inevitably come into collision with those fellows.”