they lost a kid. No, he didn't die - although most of 'em here do
from drinking the surface water. He was a wild little devil, even
if he wasn't but eight years old. Everybody knows about it. Some
Americans who were through here prospecting for gold had letters to
Señor Urique, and the boy was a favorite with them. They filled his
head with big stories about the States; and about a month after
they left, the kid disappeared, too. He was supposed to have stowed
himself away among the banana bunches on a fruit steamer, and gone
to New Orleans. He was seen once afterward in Texas, it was thought,
but they never heard anything more of him. Old Urique has spent
thousands of dollars having him looked for. The madam was broken up
worst of all. The kid was her life. She wears mourning yet. But they
say she believes he'll come back to her some day, and never gives up
hope. On the back of the boy's left hand was tattooed a flying eagle
carrying a spear in his claws. That's old Urique's coat of arms or
something that he inherited in Spain."
The Kid raised his left hand slowly and gazed at it curiously.
"That's it," said Thacker, reaching behind the official desk for his
bottle of smuggled brandy. "You're not so slow. I can do it. What
was I consul at Sandakan for? I never knew till now. In a week I'll
have the eagle bird with the frog-sticker blended in so you'd think
you were born with it. I brought a set of the needles and ink just
because I was sure you'd drop in some day, Mr. Dalton."
"Oh, hell," said the Kid. "I thought I told you my name!"
"All right, 'Kid,' then. It won't be that long. How does Señorito
Urique sound, for a change?"
"I never played son any that I remember of," said the Kid. "If I had
any parents to mention they went over the divide about the time I
gave my first bleat. What is the plan of your round-up?"
Thacker leaned back against the wall and held his glass up to the
light.
"We've come now," said he, "to the question of how far you're
willing to go in a little matter of the sort."
"I told you why I came down here," said the Kid simply.
"A good answer," said the consul. "But you won't have to go that
far. Here's the scheme. After I get the trademark tattooed on your
hand I'll notify old Urique. In the meantime I'll furnish you with
all of the family history I can find out, so you can be studying up
points to talk about. You've got the looks, you speak the Spanish,
you know the facts, you can tell about Texas, you've got the tattoo
mark. When I notify them that the rightful heir has returned and is
waiting to know whether he will be received and pardoned, what will
happen? They'll simply rush down here and fall on your neck, and the
curtain goes down for refreshments and a stroll in the lobby."
"I'm waiting," said the Kid. "I haven't had my saddle off in your
camp long, pardner, and I never met you before; but if you intend to
let it go at a parental blessing, why, I'm mistaken in my man,
that's all."
"Thanks," said the consul. "I haven't met anybody in a long time
that keeps up with an argument as well as you do. The rest of it is
simple. If they take you in only for a while it's long enough. Don't
give 'em time to hunt up the strawberry mark on your left shoulder.
Old Urique keeps anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 in his house all
the time in a little safe that you could open with a shoe buttoner.
Get it. My skill as a tattooer is worth half the boddle. We go
halves and catch a tramp steamer for Rio Janeiro. Let the United
States go to pieces if it can't get along without my services. _Que
dice, señor?_"
"It sounds to me!" said the Kid, nodding his head. "I'm out for the
dust."
"All right, then," said Thacker. "You'll have to keep close until
we get the bird on you. You can live in the back room here. I do
my own cooking, and I'll make you as comfortable as a parsimonious
Government will allow me."
Thacker had set the time at a week, but it was two weeks before the
design that he patiently tattooed upon the Kid's hand was to his
notion. And then Thacker called a _muchacho_, and dispatched this
note to the intended victim:
EL SEÑOR DON SANTOS URIQUE,
La Casa Blanca,
MY DEAR SIR:
I beg permission to inform you that there is in my house as
a temporary guest a young man who arrived in Buenas Tierras
from the United States some days ago. Without wishing to
excite any hopes that may not be realized, I think there is
a possibility of his being your long-absent son. It might be
well for you to call and see him. If he is, it is my opinion
that his intention was to return to his home, but upon
arriving here, his courage failed him from doubts as to how
he would be received. Your true servant,
THOMPSON THACKER.
Half an hour afterward - quick time for Buenas Tierras - Señor
Urique's ancient landau drove to the consul's door, with the
barefooted coachman beating and shouting at the team of fat, awkward
horses.
A tall man with a white moustache alighted, and assisted to the
ground a lady who was dressed and veiled in unrelieved black.
The two hastened inside, and were met by Thacker with his best
diplomatic bow. By his desk stood a slender young man with
clear-cut, sun-browned features and smoothly brushed black hair.
Señora Urique threw back her black veil with a quick gesture. She
was past middle age, and her hair was beginning to silver, but her
full, proud figure and clear olive skin retained traces of the
beauty peculiar to the Basque province. But, once you had seen her
eyes, and comprehended the great sadness that was revealed in their
deep shadows and hopeless expression, you saw that the woman lived
only in some memory.
She bent upon the young man a long look of the most agonized
questioning. Then her great black eyes turned, and her gaze rested
upon his left hand. And then with a sob, not loud, but seeming to
shake the room, she cried "_Hijo mio!_" and caught the Llano Kid to
her heart.
A month afterward the Kid came to the consulate in response to a
message sent by Thacker.
He looked the young Spanish _caballero_. His clothes were imported,
and the wiles of the jewellers had not been spent upon him in vain.
A more than respectable diamond shone on his finger as he rolled a
shuck cigarette.
"What's doing?" asked Thacker.
"Nothing much," said the Kid calmly. "I eat my first iguana steak
to-day. They're them big lizards, you _sabe_? I reckon, though, that
frijoles and side bacon would do me about as well. Do you care for
iguanas, Thacker?"
"No, nor for some other kinds of reptiles," said Thacker.
It was three in the afternoon, and in another hour he would be in
his state of beatitude.
"It's time you were making good, sonny," he went on, with an ugly
look on his reddened face. "You're not playing up to me square.
You've been the prodigal son for four weeks now, and you could have
had veal for every meal on a gold dish if you'd wanted it. Now, Mr.
Kid, do you think it's right to leave me out so long on a husk diet?
What's the trouble? Don't you get your filial eyes on anything
that looks like cash in the Casa Blanca? Don't tell me you don't.
Everybody knows where old Urique keeps his stuff. It's U.S.
currency, too; he don't accept anything else. What's doing? Don't
say 'nothing' this time."
"Why, sure," said the Kid, admiring his diamond, "there's plenty of
money up there. I'm no judge of collateral in bunches, but I will
undertake for to say that I've seen the rise of $50,000 at a time in
that tin grub box that my adopted father calls his safe. And he lets
me carry the key sometimes just to show me that he knows I'm the
real little Francisco that strayed from the herd a long time ago."
"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked Thacker, angrily. "Don't you
forget that I can upset your apple-cart any day I want to. If old
Urique knew you were an imposter, what sort of things would happen
to you? Oh, you don't know this country, Mr. Texas Kid. The laws
here have got mustard spread between 'em. These people here'd
stretch you out like a frog that had been stepped on, and give you
about fifty sticks at every corner of the plaza. And they'd wear
every stick out, too. What was left of you they'd feed to
alligators."
"I might just as well tell you now, pardner," said the Kid, sliding
down low on his steamer chair, "that things are going to stay just
as they are. They're about right now."
"What do you mean?" asked Thacker, rattling the bottom of his glass
on his desk.
"The scheme's off," said the Kid. "And whenever you have the
pleasure of speaking to me address me as Don Francisco Urique. I'll
guarantee I'll answer to it. We'll let Colonel Urique keep his
money. His little tin safe is as good as the time-locker in the
First National Bank of Laredo as far as you and me are concerned."
"You're going to throw me down, then, are you?" said the consul.
"Sure," said the Kid cheerfully. "Throw you down. That's it. And now
I'll tell you why. The first night I was up at the colonel's house
they introduced me to a bedroom. No blankets on the floor - a real
room, with a bed and things in it. And before I was asleep, in comes
this artificial mother of mine and tucks in the covers. 'Panchito,'
she says, 'my little lost one, God has brought you back to me. I
bless His name forever.' It was that, or some truck like that, she
said. And down comes a drop or two of rain and hits me on the nose.
And all that stuck by me, Mr. Thacker. And it's been that way ever
since. And it's got to stay that way. Don't you think that it's for
what's in it for me, either, that I say so. If you have any such
ideas, keep 'em to yourself. I haven't had much truck with women in
my life, and no mothers to speak of, but here's a lady that we've
got to keep fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm a
low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on this trail instead
of God, but I'll travel it to the end. And now, don't forget that
I'm Don Francisco Urique whenever you happen to mention my name."
"I'll expose you to-day, you - you double-dyed traitor," stammered
Thacker.
The Kid arose and, without violence, took Thacker by the throat with
a hand of steel, and shoved him slowly into a corner. Then he drew
from under his left arm his pearl-handled .45 and poked the cold
muzzle of it against the consul's mouth.
"I told you why I come here," he said, with his old freezing smile.
"If I leave here, you'll be the reason. Never forget it, pardner.
Now, what is my name?"
"Er - Don Francisco Urique," gasped Thacker.
From outside came a sound of wheels, and the shouting of some one,
and the sharp thwacks of a wooden whipstock upon the backs of fat
horses.
The Kid put up his gun, and walked toward the door. But he turned
again and came back to the trembling Thacker, and held up his left
hand with its back toward the consul.
"There's one more reason," he said slowly, "why things have got to
stand as they are. The fellow I killed in Laredo had one of them
same pictures on his left hand."
Outside, the ancient landau of Don Santos Urique rattled to the
door. The coachman ceased his bellowing. Señora Urique, in a
voluminous gay gown of white lace and flying ribbons, leaned forward
with a happy look in her great soft eyes.
"Are you within, dear son?" she called, in the rippling Castilian.
"_Madre mia, yo vengo_ [mother, I come]," answered the young Don
Francisco Urique.
IX
THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE
For some months of a certain year a grim bandit infested the Texas
border along the Rio Grande. Peculiarly striking to the optic nerve
was this notorious marauder. His personality secured him the title
of "Black Eagle, the Terror of the Border." Many fearsome tales are
on record concerning the doings of him and his followers. Suddenly,
in the space of a single minute, Black Eagle vanished from earth.
He was never heard of again. His own band never even guessed the
mystery of his disappearance. The border ranches and settlements
feared he would come again to ride and ravage the mesquite flats.
He never will. It is to disclose the fate of Black Eagle that this
narrative is written.
The initial movement of the story is furnished by the foot of a
bartender in St. Louis. His discerning eye fell upon the form
of Chicken Ruggles as he pecked with avidity at the free lunch.
Chicken was a "hobo." He had a long nose like the bill of a fowl,
an inordinate appetite for poultry, and a habit of gratifying it
without expense, which accounts for the name given him by his fellow
vagrants.
Physicians agree that the partaking of liquids at meal times is
not a healthy practice. The hygiene of the saloon promulgates the
opposite. Chicken had neglected to purchase a drink to accompany
his meal. The bartender rounded the counter, caught the injudicious
diner by the ear with a lemon squeezer, led him to the door and
kicked him into the street.
Thus the mind of Chicken was brought to realize the signs of
coming winter. The night was cold; the stars shone with unkindly
brilliancy; people were hurrying along the streets in two egotistic,
jostling streams. Men had donned their overcoats, and Chicken knew
to an exact percentage the increased difficulty of coaxing dimes
from those buttoned-in vest pockets. The time had come for his
annual exodus to the south.
A little boy, five or six years old, stood looking with covetous
eyes in a confectioner's window. In one small hand he held an empty
two-ounce vial; in the other he grasped tightly something flat and
round, with a shining milled edge. The scene presented a field of
operations commensurate to Chicken's talents and daring. After
sweeping the horizon to make sure that no official tug was cruising
near, he insidiously accosted his prey. The boy, having been early
taught by his household to regard altruistic advances with extreme
suspicion, received the overtures coldly.
Then Chicken knew that he must make one of those desperate,
nerve-shattering plunges into speculation that fortune sometimes
requires of those who would win her favour. Five cents was his
capital, and this he must risk against the chance of winning what
lay within the close grasp of the youngster's chubby hand. It was
a fearful lottery, Chicken knew. But he must accomplish his end by
strategy, since he had a wholesome terror of plundering infants
by force. Once, in a park, driven by hunger, he had committed
an onslaught upon a bottle of peptonized infant's food in the
possession of an occupant of a baby carriage. The outraged infant
had so promptly opened its mouth and pressed the button that
communicated with the welkin that help arrived, and Chicken did his
thirty days in a snug coop. Wherefore he was, as he said, "leary of
kids."
Beginning artfully to question the boy concerning his choice of
sweets, he gradually drew out the information he wanted. Mamma said
he was to ask the drug store man for ten cents' worth of paregoric
in the bottle; he was to keep his hand shut tight over the dollar;
he must not stop to talk to anyone in the street; he must ask the
drug-store man to wrap up the change and put it in the pocket of
his trousers. Indeed, they had pockets - two of them! And he liked
chocolate creams best.
Chicken went into the store and turned plunger. He invested his
entire capital in C.A.N.D.Y. stocks, simply to pave the way to the
greater risk following.
He gave the sweets to the youngster, and had the satisfaction of
perceiving that confidence was established. After that it was easy
to obtain leadership of the expedition; to take the investment by
the hand and lead it to a nice drug store he knew of in the same
block. There Chicken, with a parental air, passed over the dollar
and called for the medicine, while the boy crunched his candy, glad
to be relieved of the responsibility of the purchase. And then
the successful investor, searching his pockets, found an overcoat
button - the extent of his winter trousseau - and, wrapping it
carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding
juvenility. Setting the youngster's face homeward, and patting him
benevolently on the back - for Chicken's heart was as soft as those
of his feathered namesakes - the speculator quit the market with a
profit of 1,700 per cent. on his invested capital.
Two hours later an Iron Mountain freight engine pulled out of the
railroad yards, Texas bound, with a string of empties. In one of the
cattle cars, half buried in excelsior, Chicken lay at ease. Beside
him in his nest was a quart bottle of very poor whisky and a paper
bag of bread and cheese. Mr. Ruggles, in his private car, was on his
trip south for the winter season.
For a week that car was trundled southward, shifted, laid over, and
manipulated after the manner of rolling stock, but Chicken stuck
to it, leaving it only at necessary times to satisfy his hunger
and thirst. He knew it must go down to the cattle country, and
San Antonio, in the heart of it, was his goal. There the air was
salubrious and mild; the people indulgent and long-suffering. The
bartenders there would not kick him. If he should eat too long or
too often at one place they would swear at him as if by rote and
without heat. They swore so drawlingly, and they rarely paused short
of their full vocabulary, which was copious, so that Chicken had
often gulped a good meal during the process of the vituperative
prohibition. The season there was always spring-like; the plazas
were pleasant at night, with music and gaiety; except during the
slight and infrequent cold snaps one could sleep comfortably out of
doors in case the interiors should develop inhospitability.
At Texarkana his car was switched to the I. and G. N. Then still
southward it trailed until, at length, it crawled across the
Colorado bridge at Austin, and lined out, straight as an arrow, for
the run to San Antonio.
When the freight halted at that town Chicken was fast asleep. In ten
minutes the train was off again for Laredo, the end of the road.
Those empty cattle cars were for distribution along the line at
points from which the ranches shipped their stock.
When Chicken awoke his car was stationary. Looking out between the
slats he saw it was a bright, moonlit night. Scrambling out, he saw
his car with three others abandoned on a little siding in a wild
and lonesome country. A cattle pen and chute stood on one side of
the track. The railroad bisected a vast, dim ocean of prairie, in
the midst of which Chicken, with his futile rolling stock, was as
completely stranded as was Robinson with his land-locked boat.
A white post stood near the rails. Going up to it, Chicken read the
letters at the top, S. A. 90. Laredo was nearly as far to the south.
He was almost a hundred miles from any town. Coyotes began to yelp
in the mysterious sea around him. Chicken felt lonesome. He had
lived in Boston without an education, in Chicago without nerve, in
Philadelphia without a sleeping place, in New York without a pull,
and in Pittsburg sober, and yet he had never felt so lonely as now.
Suddenly through the intense silence, he heard the whicker of a
horse. The sound came from the side of the track toward the east,
and Chicken began to explore timorously in that direction. He
stepped high along the mat of curly mesquit grass, for he was afraid
of everything there might be in this wilderness - snakes, rats,
brigands, centipedes, mirages, cowboys, fandangoes, tarantulas,
tamales - he had read of them in the story papers. Rounding a clump
of prickly pear that reared high its fantastic and menacing array of
rounded heads, he was struck to shivering terror by a snort and a
thunderous plunge, as the horse, himself startled, bounded away some
fifty yards, and then resumed his grazing. But here was the one
thing in the desert that Chicken did not fear. He had been reared on
a farm; he had handled horses, understood them, and could ride.
Approaching slowly and speaking soothingly, he followed the animal,
which, after its first flight, seemed gentle enough, and secured the
end of the twenty-foot lariat that dragged after him in the grass.
It required him but a few moments to contrive the rope into an
ingenious nose-bridle, after the style of the Mexican _borsal_. In
another he was upon the horse's back and off at a splendid lope,
giving the animal free choice of direction. "He will take me
somewhere," said Chicken to himself.
It would have been a thing of joy, that untrammelled gallop over the
moonlit prairie, even to Chicken, who loathed exertion, but that his
mood was not for it. His head ached; a growing thirst was upon him;
the "somewhere" whither his lucky mount might convey him was full of
dismal peradventure.
And now he noted that the horse moved to a definite goal. Where the
prairie lay smooth he kept his course straight as an arrow's toward
the east. Deflected by hill or arroyo or impractical spinous brakes,
he quickly flowed again into the current, charted by his unerring
instinct. At last, upon the side of a gentle rise, he suddenly
subsided to a complacent walk. A stone's cast away stood a little
mott of coma trees; beneath it a _jacal_ such as the Mexicans
erect - a one-room house of upright poles daubed with clay and roofed
with grass or tule reeds. An experienced eye would have estimated
the spot as the headquarters of a small sheep ranch. In the
moonlight the ground in the nearby corral showed pulverized to
a level smoothness by the hoofs of the sheep. Everywhere was
carelessly distributed the paraphernalia of the place - ropes,
bridles, saddles, sheep pelts, wool sacks, feed troughs, and camp
litter. The barrel of drinking water stood in the end of the
two-horse wagon near the door. The harness was piled, promiscuous,
upon the wagon tongue, soaking up the dew.
Chicken slipped to earth, and tied the horse to a tree. He halloed
again and again, but the house remained quiet. The door stood open,
and he entered cautiously. The light was sufficient for him to see
that no one was at home. The room was that of a bachelor ranchman
who was content with the necessaries of life. Chicken rummaged
intelligently until he found what he had hardly dared hope for - a
small, brown jug that still contained something near a quart of his
desire.
Half an hour later, Chicken - now a gamecock of hostile
aspect - emerged from the house with unsteady steps. He had drawn
upon the absent ranchman's equipment to replace his own ragged
attire. He wore a suit of coarse brown ducking, the coat being a
sort of rakish bolero, jaunty to a degree. Boots he had donned, and
spurs that whirred with every lurching step. Buckled around him was
a belt full of cartridges with a big six-shooter in each of its two
holsters.
Prowling about, he found blankets, a saddle and bridle with which he
caparisoned his steed. Again mounting, he rode swiftly away, singing
a loud and tuneless song.
Bud King's band of desperadoes, outlaws and horse and cattle thieves
were in camp at a secluded spot on the bank of the Frio. Their
depredations in the Rio Grande country, while no bolder than usual,
had been advertised more extensively, and Captain Kinney's company
of rangers had been ordered down to look after them. Consequently,
Bud King, who was a wise general, instead of cutting out a hot trail
for the upholders of the law, as his men wished to do, retired for
the time to the prickly fastnesses of the Frio valley.
Though the move was a prudent one, and not incompatible with Bud's
well-known courage, it raised dissension among the members of the
band. In fact, while they thus lay ingloriously _perdu_ in the
brush, the question of Bud King's fitness for the leadership was
argued, with closed doors, as it were, by his followers. Never
before had Bud's skill or efficiency been brought to criticism; but
his glory was waning (and such is glory's fate) in the light of a
newer star. The sentiment of the band was crystallizing into the
opinion that Black Eagle could lead them with more lustre, profit,
and distinction.
This Black Eagle - sub-titled the "Terror of the Border" - had been a
member of the gang about three months.
One night while they were in camp on the San Miguel water-hole a
solitary horseman on the regulation fiery steed dashed in among
them. The newcomer was of a portentous and devastating aspect. A
beak-like nose with a predatory curve projected above a mass of
bristling, blue-black whiskers. His eye was cavernous and fierce.
He was spurred, sombreroed, booted, garnished with revolvers,
abundantly drunk, and very much unafraid. Few people in the country
drained by the Rio Bravo would have cared thus to invade alone the
camp of Bud King. But this fell bird swooped fearlessly upon them
and demanded to be fed.
Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your
enemy pass your way you must feed him before you shoot him. You
must empty your larder into him before you empty your lead. So the
stranger of undeclared intentions was set down to a mighty feast.
A talkative bird he was, full of most marvellous loud tales and
exploits, and speaking a language at times obscure but never
colourless. He was a new sensation to Bud King's men, who rarely
encountered new types. They hung, delighted, upon his vainglorious
boasting, the spicy strangeness of his lingo, his contemptuous
familiarity with life, the world, and remote places, and the
extravagant frankness with which he conveyed his sentiments.
To their guest the band of outlaws seemed to be nothing more than a
congregation of country bumpkins whom he was "stringing for grub"
just as he would have told his stories at the back door of a
farmhouse to wheedle a meal. And, indeed, his ignorance was not
without excuse, for the "bad man" of the Southwest does not run to
extremes. Those brigands might justly have been taken for a little
party of peaceable rustics assembled for a fish-fry or pecan
gathering. Gentle of manner, slouching of gait, soft-voiced,
unpicturesquely clothed; not one of them presented to the eye any
witness of the desperate records they had earned.
For two days the glittering stranger within the camp was feasted.
Then, by common consent, he was invited to become a member of the
band. He consented, presenting for enrollment the prodigious name
of "Captain Montressor." This name was immediately overruled by the
band, and "Piggy" substituted as a compliment to the awful and
insatiate appetite of its owner.
Thus did the Texas border receive the most spectacular brigand that
ever rode its chaparral.
For the next three months Bud King conducted business as usual,
escaping encounters with law officers and being content with
reasonable profits. The band ran off some very good companies of
horses from the ranges, and a few bunches of fine cattle which they
got safely across the Rio Grande and disposed of to fair advantage.
Often the band would ride into the little villages and Mexican
settlements, terrorizing the inhabitants and plundering for the
provisions and ammunition they needed. It was during these bloodless
raids that Piggy's ferocious aspect and frightful voice gained him a
renown more widespread and glorious than those other gentle-voiced
and sad-faced desperadoes could have acquired in a lifetime.
The Mexicans, most apt in nomenclature, first called him The Black
Eagle, and used to frighten the babes by threatening them with tales
of the dreadful robber who carried off little children in his great
beak. Soon the name extended, and Black Eagle, the Terror of the
Border, became a recognized factor in exaggerated newspaper reports
and ranch gossip.
The country from the Nueces to the Rio Grande was a wild but fertile
stretch, given over to the sheep and cattle ranches. Range was free;
the inhabitants were few; the law was mainly a letter, and the
pirates met with little opposition until the flaunting and garish
Piggy gave the band undue advertisement. Then Kinney's ranger
company headed for those precincts, and Bud King knew that it meant
grim and sudden war or else temporary retirement. Regarding the risk
to be unnecessary, he drew off his band to an almost inaccessible
spot on the bank of the Frio. Wherefore, as has been said,
dissatisfaction arose among the members, and impeachment proceedings
against Bud were premeditated, with Black Eagle in high favour for
the succession. Bud King was not unaware of the sentiment, and he
called aside Cactus Taylor, his trusted lieutenant, to discuss it.
"If the boys," said Bud, "ain't satisfied with me, I'm willing
to step out. They're buckin' against my way of handlin' 'em. And
'specially because I concludes to hit the brush while Sam Kinney is
ridin' the line. I saves 'em from bein' shot or sent up on a state
contract, and they up and says I'm no good."
"It ain't so much that," explained Cactus, "as it is they're plum
locoed about Piggy. They want them whiskers and that nose of his to
split the wind at the head of the column."
"There's somethin' mighty seldom about Piggy," declared Bud,
musingly. "I never yet see anything on the hoof that he exactly
grades up with. He can shore holler a plenty, and he straddles a
hoss from where you laid the chunk. But he ain't never been smoked
yet. You know, Cactus, we ain't had a row since he's been with us.
Piggy's all right for skearin' the greaser kids and layin' waste a
cross-roads store. I reckon he's the finest canned oyster buccaneer
and cheese pirate that ever was, but how's his appetite for
fightin'? I've knowed some citizens you'd think was starvin' for
trouble get a bad case of dyspepsy the first dose of lead they had
to take."
"He talks all spraddled out," said Cactus, "'bout the rookuses he's
been in. He claims to have saw the elephant and hearn the owl."
"I know," replied Bud, using the cowpuncher's expressive phrase of
skepticism, "but it sounds to me!"
This conversation was held one night in camp while the other members
of the band - eight in number - were sprawling around the fire,
lingering over their supper. When Bud and Cactus ceased talking they
heard Piggy's formidable voice holding forth to the others as usual
while he was engaged in checking, though never satisfying, his
ravening appetite.
"Wat's de use," he was saying, "of chasin' little red cowses and
hosses 'round for t'ousands of miles? Dere ain't nuttin' in it.
Gallopin' t'rough dese bushes and briers, and gettin' a t'irst dat a
brewery couldn't put out, and missin' meals! Say! You know what I'd
do if I was main finger of dis bunch? I'd stick up a train. I'd blow
de express car and make hard dollars where you guys get wind. Youse
makes me tired. Dis sook-cow kind of cheap sport gives me a pain."
Later on, a deputation waited on Bud. They stood on one leg,
chewed mesquit twigs and circumlocuted, for they hated to hurt his
feelings. Bud foresaw their business, and made it easy for them.
Bigger risks and larger profits was what they wanted.
The suggestion of Piggy's about holding up a train had fired their
imagination and increased their admiration for the dash and boldness
of the instigator. They were such simple, artless, and custom-bound
bush-rangers that they had never before thought of extending their
habits beyond the running off of live-stock and the shooting of such
of their acquaintances as ventured to interfere.
Bud acted "on the level," agreeing to take a subordinate place in
the gang until Black Eagle should have been given a trial as leader.
After a great deal of consultation, studying of time-tables, and
discussion of the country's topography, the time and place for
carrying out their new enterprise was decided upon. At that
time there was a feedstuff famine in Mexico and a cattle famine
in certain parts of the United States, and there was a brisk
international trade. Much money was being shipped along the
railroads that connected the two republics. It was agreed that the
most promising place for the contemplated robbery was at Espina,
a little station on the I. and G. N., about forty miles north of
Laredo. The train stopped there one minute; the country around was
wild and unsettled; the station consisted of but one house in which
the agent lived.
Black Eagle's band set out, riding by night. Arriving in the
vicinity of Espina they rested their horses all day in a thicket a
few miles distant.
The train was due at Espina at 10.30 P.M. They could rob the train
and be well over the Mexican border with their booty by daylight the
next morning.
To do Black Eagle justice, he exhibited no signs of flinching from
the responsible honours that had been conferred upon him.
He assigned his men to their respective posts with discretion, and
coached them carefully as to their duties. On each side of the track
four of the band were to lie concealed in the chaparral. Gotch-Ear
Rodgers was to stick up the station agent. Bronco Charlie was to
remain with the horses, holding them in readiness. At a spot where
it was calculated the engine would be when the train stopped, Bud
King was to lie hidden on one side, and Black Eagle himself on the
other. The two would get the drop on the engineer and fireman, force
them to descend and proceed to the rear. Then the express car would
be looted, and the escape made. No one was to move until Black Eagle
gave the signal by firing his revolver. The plan was perfect.
At ten minutes to train time every man was at his post, effectually
concealed by the thick chaparral that grew almost to the rails.
The night was dark and lowering, with a fine drizzle falling from
the flying gulf clouds. Black Eagle crouched behind a bush within
five yards of the track. Two six-shooters were belted around him.
Occasionally he drew a large black bottle from his pocket and raised
it to his mouth.
A star appeared far down the track which soon waxed into the
headlight of the approaching train. It came on with an increasing
roar; the engine bore down upon the ambushing desperadoes with a
glare and a shriek like some avenging monster come to deliver them
to justice. Black Eagle flattened himself upon the ground. The
engine, contrary to their calculations, instead of stopping between
him and Bud King's place of concealment, passed fully forty yards
farther before it came to a stand.
The bandit leader rose to his feet and peered through the bush. His
men all lay quiet, awaiting the signal. Immediately opposite Black
Eagle was a thing that drew his attention. Instead of being a
regular passenger train it was a mixed one. Before him stood a box
car, the door of which, by some means, had been left slightly open.
Black Eagle went up to it and pushed the door farther open. An odour
came forth - a damp, rancid, familiar, musty, intoxicating, beloved
odour stirring strongly at old memories of happy days and travels.
Black Eagle sniffed at the witching smell as the returned wanderer
smells of the rose that twines his boyhood's cottage home. Nostalgia
seized him. He put his hand inside. Excelsior - dry, springy, curly,
soft, enticing, covered the floor. Outside the drizzle had turned to
a chilling rain.
The train bell clanged. The bandit chief unbuckled his belt and cast
it, with its revolvers, upon the ground. His spurs followed quickly,
and his broad sombrero. Black Eagle was moulting. The train started
with a rattling jerk. The ex-Terror of the Border scrambled into
the box car and closed the door. Stretched luxuriously upon the
excelsior, with the black bottle clasped closely to his breast, his
eyes closed, and a foolish, happy smile upon his terrible features
Chicken Ruggles started upon his return trip.
Undisturbed, with the band of desperate bandits lying motionless,
awaiting the signal to attack, the train pulled out from Espina. As
its speed increased, and the black masses of chaparral went whizzing
past on either side, the express messenger, lighting his pipe,
looked through his window and remarked, feelingly:
"What a jim-dandy place for a hold-up!"
X
A RETRIEVED REFORMATION
A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was
assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office.
There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed
that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way.
He had served nearly ten months of a four year sentence. He had
expected to stay only about three months, at the longest. When a
man with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is
received in the "stir" it is hardly worth while to cut his hair.
"Now, Valentine," said the warden, "you'll go out in the morning.
Brace up, and make a man of yourself. You're not a bad fellow at
heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight."
"Me?" said Jimmy, in surprise. "Why, I never cracked a safe in my
life."
"Oh, no," laughed the warden. "Of course not. Let's see, now. How
was it you happened to get sent up on that Springfield job? Was
it because you wouldn't prove an alibi for fear of compromising
somebody in extremely high-toned society? Or was it simply a case of
a mean old jury that had it in for you? It's always one or the other
with you innocent victims."
"Me?" said Jimmy, still blankly virtuous. "Why, warden, I never was
in Springfield in my life!"
"Take him back, Cronin!" said the warden, "and fix him up with
outgoing clothes. Unlock him at seven in the morning, and let him
come to the bull-pen. Better think over my advice, Valentine."
At a quarter past seven on the next morning Jimmy stood in the
warden's outer office. He had on a suit of the villainously fitting,
ready-made clothes and a pair of the stiff, squeaky shoes that the
state furnishes to its discharged compulsory guests.
The clerk handed him a railroad ticket and the five-dollar bill
with which the law expected him to rehabilitate himself into good
citizenship and prosperity. The warden gave him a cigar, and shook
hands. Valentine, 9762, was chronicled on the books, "Pardoned by
Governor," and Mr. James Valentine walked out into the sunshine.
Disregarding the song of the birds, the waving green trees, and
the smell of the flowers, Jimmy headed straight for a restaurant.
There he tasted the first sweet joys of liberty in the shape of a
broiled chicken and a bottle of white wine - followed by a cigar a
grade better than the one the warden had given him. From there he
proceeded leisurely to the depot. He tossed a quarter into the hat
of a blind man sitting by the door, and boarded his train. Three
hours set him down in a little town near the state line. He went to
the café of one Mike Dolan and shook hands with Mike, who was alone
behind the bar.
"Sorry we couldn't make it sooner, Jimmy, me boy," said Mike. "But
we had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the
governor nearly balked. Feeling all right?"
"Fine," said Jimmy. "Got my key?"
He got his key and went upstairs, unlocking the door of a room at
the rear. Everything was just as he had left it. There on the floor
was still Ben Price's collar-button that had been torn from that
eminent detective's shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy to
arrest him.
Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in
the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suit-case. He opened this