“You may well ask,” returned Tucker, with an equal ostentation of bitterness, as he slightly waved his companion away.  “But I reckoned I could trust a white man that I’d been kind to, and who wouldn’t go back on me.  No, no, let me go!  Hand me over to the sheriff!”

Patterson had suddenly grasped both the hands of the picturesque scamp before him, with an affection that for an instant almost shamed the man who had ruined him.  But Tucker’s egotism whispered that this affection was only a recognition of his own superiority, and felt flattered.  He was beginning to believe that he was really the injured party.

“What I have and what I have had is yours, Spence,” returned Patterson, with a sad and simple directness that made any further discussion a gratuitous insult.  “I only wanted to know what you reckoned to do here.”

“I want to get over across the Coast Range to Monterey,” said Tucker.  “Once there, one of those coasting schooners will bring me down to Acapulco, where the ship will put in.”

Patterson remained silent for a moment.  “There’s a mustang in the corral you can take—­leastways, I shan’t know that it’s gone—­until to-morrow afternoon.  In an hour from now,” he added, looking from the window, “these clouds will settle down to business.  It will rain; there will be light enough for you to find your way by the regular trail over the mountain, but not enough for any one to know you.  If you can’t push through to-night, you can lie over at the posada on the summit.  Them greasers that keep it won’t know you, and if they did they won’t go back on you.  And if they did go back on you, nobody would believe them.  It’s mighty curious,” he added, with gloomy philosophy, “but I reckon it’s the reason why Providence allows this kind of cattle to live among white men and others made in his image.  Take a piece of pie, won’t you?” He continued, abandoning this abstract reflection and producing half a flat pumpkin pie from the bar.  Spencer Tucker grasped the pie with one hand and his friend’s fingers with the other, and for a few moments was silent from the hurried deglutition of viand and sentiment.  “You’re a white man, Patterson, anyway,” he resumed.  “I’ll take your horse, and put it down in our account, at your own figure.  As soon as this cursed thing is blown over, I’ll be back here and see you through, you bet.  I don’t desert my friends, however rough things go with me.”

“I see you don’t,” returned Patterson, with an unconscious and serious simplicity that had the effect of the most exquisite irony.  “I was only just saying to the sheriff that if there was anything I could have done for you, you wouldn’t have cut away without letting me know.”  Tucker glanced uneasily at Patterson, who continued, “Ye ain’t wanting anything else?” Then observing that his former friend and patron was roughly but newly clothed, and betrayed no trace of his last escapade, he added, “I see you’ve got a fresh harness.”