Across Texas

Lattin answered for both that they were well, and then invited the new arrival to a seat by the fire. Rickard returned thanks as courteously as if he were receiving the greatest favor that could be granted him.

The next moment the three were lolling side by side, as smiling and seemingly on as good terms as though they were brothers. Bell carried his brierwood with him, and Strubell passed him his little sack of tobacco, from which he helped himself, the party mingling their smoke, smiling and even laughing at the jocose remarks that were passed.

Herbert Watrous slept on, undisturbed by the noise, while Nick Ribsam stood in the background, viewing the scene, which impressed him as the most extraordinary he had ever witnessed.

“Let me see,” said Lattin reflectively, “it’s several months since we last met: do you remember where it was?”

“I think,” replied Rickard, looking thoughtfully at the stars, as if busy with memory, “that it was in Laredo, at Brown’s place.”

“You’re right,” struck in the cowboy; “we had a shooting scrap, and I came near passing in my checks.”

“Yes,” laughed Bell, “I thought I had you that time, but I fired too quick; the lights went out, and then the room was full of smoke and bullets. When things cleared up, you wasn’t there.”

“No,” said Lattin, “you folks were too thick for me, and I lit out; I swum the Rio Grande, just as Ben Thompson did when he got catched in the same place and in the same way. He got off without a scratch, as he did hundreds of times before, only to catch it at Santone at last, as he was bound to do sooner or later.”

CHAPTER IX.

DEPARTURE OF THE GUEST

“BEN and me done travelled a good deal together,” said Rickard, with a faint sigh; “he was the quickest chap on the shoot I ever met; I never knowed him to miss when he had any show at all, and he was the luckiest fellow that ever walked. Do you know what Ben’s rule was?” asked Rickard, turning toward the cowboys, as if about to impart a piece of delightful news.

“It was to shoot whenever he had the slightest excuse,” replied Strubell, who evidently had little respect for one of the most famous characters that Texas ever brought to the surface.

“Whenever he got into a shooting scrap he always let the other chap fire first; for then, when he let fly, he had a good case of self-defence. He always done that, as he told me himself.”

I may be allowed to say that this remark about Ben Thompson, once City Marshal of Austin, was true. He informed me that he had followed the rule for years, and it doubtless helped to secure his acquittal in a large number of the cases where he was tried for slaying others, though the shameful admiration shown him by all classes had much to do with his immunity from legal punishment. As has been hinted, however, there came a time when Ben’s rule failed to work satisfactorily for himself. It was down in San Antonio, the scene of more than one of his crimes, that a half dozen men worked in a volley from their Winchesters ahead of Ben’s revolver, and he died with his boots on, the last shot which he fired before breathing his last causing the death of one of his assailants.

It is hardly worth while to give the conversation which went on by the camp fire for fully two hours, for it was not of a character that can be commended to readers. There were stirring reminiscences of those “bad men,” known a few years ago respectively as Bill Longley and John Wesley Hardin. I suppose that Texas never produced two more desperate men. When I saw Longley, he was as handsome a person as I ever met, and proved to be one of the few legally hanged individuals in the Lone Star State, his taking off occurring some years ago in Galveston.

Hardin was more ill-favored, as to personal appearance. He was the son of a preacher, and was named for one of the great founders of Methodism. When I last talked with the stumpy, broad-faced desperado he was in the Austin penitentiary, serving a twenty-five years’ sentence for horse stealing, the numerous capital crimes he had committed not being taken into account.

The point I am making is that Bell Rickard, who, in his way, was as evil a man as any one of those whom I have named, having entered the camp as a prisoner, was treated as a guest. No one unacquainted with the circumstances would have suspected there was any feeling other than the strongest friendship between them.

They recalled the numerous stirring scrimmages in which they had taken part, and generally with Strubell and Lattin as the deadly enemies of Rickard and his friends. They laughed over the many close calls, when their mutual escapes seemed to turn on a hair, and even referred to those that were likely to occur again in the near future.

Nick Ribsam grew so interested that he forgot his duty as sentinel, and, leaning on his gun, stared with open mouth at the attenuated Texan, with his scraggly beard, restless gray eyes, and alert movements, as he smoked and laughed and talked.

Suddenly Strubell turned to the youth and said:

“Nick, I guess you had better take a look at the animals; Bell may have some friends around; if you get sight of any, don’t bother to ask questions, but drop them at the first shot.”

Rickard stopped in the middle of a remark he was making, and looked at the young man with a smile. Then he resumed his words, and the conversation went on as before. Nick walked slowly out to where the ponies were lying on the ground, wondering and puzzled by the new phase of southwestern life as he saw it for the first time.

“Wal,” said Rickard, after talking a while longer, as he rose to his feet, stretched his limbs, and yawned, “I guess I’ll have to be going, pards. By-by.”

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