Captain ****, without a word, placed a large, protecting hand upon Catron's shoulder, allowed it to slip to his waist, and then drew his visitor quietly, but firmly, within the cabin. Yet, in the very movement, he had managed to gently and unobtrusively possess himself of Catron's pistol.
"Save ye! From which?" asked Captain ****, as quietly and unobtrusively dropping the Derringer in a flour sack.
"From everything," gasped Catron, "from the men that are hounding me, from my family, from my friends, but most of all--from, from--myself!"
He had, in turn, grasped Captain ****, and forced him frenziedly against the wall. The captain released himself, and, taking the hands of his excited visitor, said slowly,--"Ye wan some blue mass--suthin' to unload your liver. I'll get it up for ye."
"But, Captain ****, I'm an outcast, shamed, disgraced--"
"Two on them pills taken now, and two in the morning," continued the captain, gravely, rolling a bolus in his fingers, "will bring yer head to the wind again. Yer fallin' to leeward all the time, and ye want to brace up."
"But, Captain," continued the agonized man, again clutching the sinewy arms of his host, and forcing his livid face and fixed eyes within a few inches of Captain ****'s, "hear me! You must and shall hear me. I've been in jail--do you hear?--in jail, like a common felon. I've been sent to the asylum, like a demented pauper. I've--"
"Two now, and two in the morning," continued the captain, quietly releasing one hand only to place two enormous pills in the mouth of the excited Catron, "thar now--a drink o' whisky--thar, that'll do--just enough to take the taste out of yer mouth, wash it down, and belay it, so to speak. And how are the mills running, gin'rally, over at the Bar?"
"Captain ****, hear me--if you ARE my friend, for God's sake hear me! An hour ago I should have been a dead man--"
"They say that Sam Bolin hez sold out of the Excelsior--"
"Captain ****! Listen, for God's sake; I have suffered--"
But Captain **** was engaged in critically examining his man. "I guess I'll ladle ye out some o' that soothin' mixture I bought down at Simpson's t' other day," he said, reflectively. "And I onderstand the boys up on the Bar think the rains will set in airly."
But here Nature was omnipotent. Worn by exhaustion, excitement, and fever, and possibly a little affected by Captain ****'s later potion, Roger Catron turned white, and lapsed against the wall. In an instant Captain **** had caught him, as a child, lifted him in his stalwart arms, wrapped a blanket around him, and deposited him in his bunk. Yet, even in his prostration, Catron made one more despairing appeal for mental sympathy from his host.
"I know I'm sick--dying, perhaps," he gasped, from under the blankets; "but promise me, whatever comes, tell my wife--say to--"
"It has been lookin' consid'ble like rain, lately, hereabouts," continued the captain, coolly, in a kind of amphibious slang, characteristic of the man, "but in these yer latitudes no man kin set up to be a weather sharp."
"Captain! will you hear me?"
"Yer goin' to sleep, now," said the captain, potentially.
"But, Captain, they are pursuing me! If they should track me here?"
"Thar is a rifle over thar, and yer's my navy revolver. When I've emptied them, and want you to bear a hand, I'll call ye. Just now your lay is to turn in. It's my watch."
There was something so positive, strong, assuring, and a little awesome in the captain's manner, that the trembling, nervously-prostrated man beneath the blankets forbore to question further.
In a few moments his breathing, albeit hurried and irregular, announced that he slept. The captain then arose, for a moment critically examined the sleeping man, holding his head a little on one side, whistling softly, and stepping backwards to get a good perspective, but always with contemplative good humor, as if Catron were a work of art, which he (the captain) had created, yet one that he was not yet entirely satisfied with. Then he put a large pea-jacket over his flannel blouse, dragged a Mexican serape from the corner, and putting it over his shoulders, opened the cabin door, sat down on the doorstep, and leaning back against the door-post, composed himself to meditation. The moon lifted herself slowly over the crest of Deadwood Hill, and looked down, not unkindly, on his broad, white, shaven face, round and smooth as her own disc, encircled with a thin fringe of white hair and whiskers.
Indeed, he looked so like the prevailing caricatures in a comic almanac of planets, with dimly outlined features, that the moon would have been quite justified in flirting with him, as she clearly did, insinuating a twinkle into his keen, gray eyes, ****** the shadow of a dimple on his broad, fat chin, and otherwise idealizing him after the fashion of her hero-worshiping ***.
Touched by these benign influences, Captain **** presently broke forth in melody. His song was various, but chiefly, I think, confined to the recital of the exploits of one "Lorenzo," who, as related by himself,--"Shipped on board of a Liner, 'Renzo, boys, Renzo,"--a fact that seemed to have deprived him at once of all metre, grammar, or even the power of coherent narration. At times a groan or a half-articulate cry would come from the "bunk" whereon Roger Catron lay, a circumstance that always seemed to excite Captain **** to greater effort and more rapid vocalization. Toward morning, in the midst of a prolonged howl from the captain, who was finishing the "Starboard Watch, ahoy!" in three different keys, Roger Catron's voice broke suddenly and sharply from his en-wrappings:--
"Dry up, you d--d old fool, will you?"
Captain **** stopped instantly. Rising to his feet, and looking over the landscape, he took all nature into his confidence in one inconceivably arch and crafty wink. "He's coming up to the wind," he said softly, rubbing his hands. "The pills is fetchin' him.
