“Well, I won’t have anything to do with it,” Joe announced decisively.

“Of course not,” ’Frisco Kid answered.  “And with Nelson and his two men an’ French Pete, I don’t think there ’ll be any need for you anyway.”

CHAPTER XVI

’FRISCO KID’S DITTY-BOX

After the conversation died away, the two lads lay upon the cabin for perhaps an hour.  Then, without saying a word, ’Frisco Kid went below and struck a light.  Joe could hear him fumbling about, and a little later heard his own name called softly.  On going into the cabin, he saw ’Frisco Kid sitting on the edge of the bunk, a sailor’s ditty-box on his knees, and in his hand a carefully folded page from a magazine.

“Does she look like this?” he asked, smoothing it out and turning it that the other might see.

It was a half-page illustration of two girls and a boy, grouped, evidently, in an old-fashioned roomy attic, and holding a council of some sort.  The girl who was talking faced the onlooker, while the backs of the other two were turned.

“Who?” Joe queried, glancing in perplexity from the picture to ’Frisco Kid’s face.

“Your—­your sister—­Bessie.”

The word seemed reluctant in coming to his lips, and he expressed himself with a certain shy reverence, as though it were something unspeakably sacred.

Joe was nonplussed for the moment.  He could see no bearing between the two in point, and, anyway, girls were rather silly creatures to waste one’s time over.  “He ’s actually blushing,” he thought, regarding the soft glow on the other’s cheeks.  He felt an irresistible desire to laugh, and tried to smother it down.

“No, no; don’t!” ’Frisco Kid cried, snatching the paper away and putting it back in the ditty-box with shaking fingers.  Then he added more slowly:  “I thought—­I—­I kind o’ thought you would understand, and—­and—­”

His lips trembled and his eyes glistened with unwonted moistness as he turned hastily away.

The next instant Joe was by his side on the bunk, his arm around him.  Prompted by some instinctive monitor, he had done it before he thought.  A week before he could not have imagined himself in such an absurd situation—­his arm around a boy; but now it seemed the most natural thing in the world.  He did not comprehend, but he knew, whatever it was, that it was of deep importance to his companion.

“Go ahead and tell us,” he urged.  “I ’ll understand.”

“No, you won’t.  You can’t.”

“Yes, sure.  Go ahead.”

’Frisco Kid choked and shook his head.  “I don’t think I could, anyway.  It ’s more the things I feel, and I don’t know how to put them in words.”  Joe’s hand patted his shoulder reassuringly, and he went on:  “Well, it ’s this way.  You see, I don’t know much about the land, and people, and things, and I never had any brothers or sisters or playmates.  All the time I did n’t know