an consulted his watch. "Why, it's been
fanning it a right smart little while," said he, laying no stress upon
his indolent syllables.

"Huh!" went Trampas. He gave the rest of us a final unlovely scrutiny.
"It seems to have become a passenger train," he said. And he returned
abruptly inside the caboose.

"Is he the member who don't sing?" asked Scipio.

"That's the specimen," replied the Southerner.

"He don't seem musical in the face," said Scipio.

"Pshaw!" returned the Virginian. "Why, you surely ain't the man to mind
ugly mugs when they're hollow!"

The noise inside had dropped quickly to stillness. You could scarcely
catch the sound of talk. Our caboose was clicking comfortably westward,
rail after rail, mile upon mile, while night was beginning to rise from
earth into the clouded sky.

"I wonder if they have sent a search party forward to hunt Schoffner?"
said the Virginian. "I think I'll maybe join their meeting." He opened
the door upon them. "Kind o' dark hyeh, ain't it?" said he. And lighting
the lantern, he shut us out.

"What do yu' think?" said Scipio to me. "Will he take them to Sunk
Creek?"

"He evidently thinks he will," said I. "He says he will, and he has the
courage of his convictions."

"That ain't near enough courage to have!" Scipio exclaimed.
"There's times in life when a man has got to have courage WITHOUT
convictions--WITHOUT them--or he is no good. Now your friend is that
deep constitooted that you don't know and I don't know what he's
thinkin' about all this."

"If there's to be any gun-play," put in the excellent Shorty, "I'll
stand in with him."

"Ah, go to bed with your gun-play!" retorted Scipio, entirely
good-humored. "Is the Judge paying for a carload of dead punchers to
gather his beef for him? And this ain't a proposition worth a man's
gettin' hurt for himself, anyway."

"That's so," Shorty assented.

"No," speculated Scipio, as the night drew deeper round us and the
caboose click-clucked and click-clucked over the rail joints; "he's
waitin' for somebody else to open this pot. I'll bet he don't know but
one thing now, and that's that nobody else shall know he don't know
anything."

Scipio had delivered himself. He lighted a cigarette, and no more wisdom
came from him. The night was established. The rolling bad-lands sank
away in it. A train-hand had arrived over the roof, and hanging the red
lights out behind, left us again without remark or symptom of curiosity.