The Return of the Mucker, Edgar Rice Burroughs [best affordable ebook reader txt] 📗

of these generously slammed the door in the faces of his fellows, and there they pulled and hauled at each other until Flannagan was among them.

In the pitch darkness he could recognize no one; but to be on the safe side he hit out promiscuously until he had driven them all from the door, then he stood with his back toward it—the inmates of the room his prisoners.

Thus he remained for a moment threatening to shoot at the first sound of movement in the room, and then he opened the door again, and stepping just outside ordered the prisoners to file out one at a time.

As each man passed him Flannagan scrutinized his face, and it was not until they had all emerged and he had reentered the room with a light that he discovered that once again his quarry had eluded him. Detective Sergeant Flannagan was peeved.

The sun smote down upon a dusty road. A heat-haze lay upon the arid land that stretched away upon either hand toward gray-brown hills. A little adobe hut, backed by a few squalid outbuildings, stood out, a screaming high-light in its coat of whitewash, against a background that was garish with light.

Two men plodded along the road. Their coats were off, the brims of their tattered hats were pulled down over eyes closed to mere slits against sun and dust.

One of the men, glancing up at the distant hut, broke into verse:

Yet then the sun was shining down, a-blazing on the little town, A mile or so ‘way down the track a-dancing in the sun. But somehow, as I waited there, there came a shiver in the air, “The birds are flying south,” he said. “The winter has begun.”

His companion looked up at him who quoted.

“There ain’t no track,” he said, “an’ that ‘dobe shack don’t look much like a town; but otherwise his Knibbs has got our number all right, all right. We are the birds a-flyin’ south, and Flannagan was the shiver in the air. Flannagan is a reg’lar frost. Gee! but I betcha dat guy’s sore.”

“Why is it, Billy,” asked Bridge, after a moment’s silence, “that upon occasion you speak king’s English after the manner of the boulevard, and again after that of the back alley? Sometimes you say ‘that’ and ‘dat’ in the same sentence. Your conversational clashes are numerous. Surely something or someone has cramped your original style.”

“I was born and brought up on ‘dat,’” explained Billy. “SHE taught me the other line of talk. Sometimes I forget. I had about twenty years of the other and only one of hers, and twenty to one is a long shot—more apt to lose than win.”

“‘She,’ I take it, is PENELOPE,” mused Bridge, half to himself. “She must have been a fine girl.”

“‘Fine’ isn’t the right word,” Billy corrected him. “If a thing’s fine there may be something finer, and then something else finest. She was better than finest. She—she was—why, Bridge, I’d have to be a walking dictionary to tell you what she was.”

Bridge made no reply, and the two trudged on toward the whitewashed hut in silence for several minutes. Then Bridge broke it:

And you, my sweet Penelope, out there somewhere you wait for me With buds of roses in your hair and kisses on your mouth.

Billy sighed and shook his head.

“There ain’t no such luck for me,” he said. “She’s married to another gink now.”

They came at last to the hut, upon the shady side of which they found a Mexican squatting puffing upon a cigarette, while upon the doorstep sat a woman, evidently his wife, busily engaged in the preparation of some manner of foodstuff contained in a large, shallow vessel. About them played a couple of half-naked children. A baby sprawled upon a blanket just within the doorway.

The man looked up, suspiciously, as the two approached. Bridge saluted him in fairly understandable Spanish, asking for food, and telling the man that they had money with which to pay for a little—not much, just a little.

The Mexican slowly unfolded himself and arose, motioning the strangers to follow him into the interior of the hut. The woman, at a word from her lord and master, followed them, and at his further dictation brought them frijoles and tortillas.

The price he asked was nominal; but his eyes never left Bridge’s hands as the latter brought forth the money and handed it over. He appeared just a trifle disappointed when no more money than the stipulated purchase price was revealed to sight.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“We’re looking for work,” explained Bridge. “We want to get jobs on one of the American ranches or mines.”

“You better go back,” warned the Mexican. “I, myself, have nothing against the Americans, senor; but there are many of my countrymen who do not like you. The Americans are all leaving. Some already have been killed by bandits. It is not safe to go farther. Pesita’s men are all about here. Even Mexicans are not safe from him. No one knows whether he is for Villa or Carranza. If he finds a Villa ranchero, then Pesita cries Viva Carranza! and his men kill and rob. If, on the other hand, a neighbor of the last victim hears of it in time, and later Pesita comes to him, he assures Pesita that he is for Carranza, whereupon Pesita cries Viva Villa! and falls upon the poor unfortunate, who is lucky if he escapes with his life. But Americans! Ah, Pesita asks them no questions. He hates them all, and kills them all, whenever he can lay his hands upon them. He has sworn to rid Mexico of the gringos.”

“Wot’s the Dago talkin’ about?” asked Billy.

Bridge gave his companion a brief synopsis of the Mexican’s conversation.

“Only the gentleman is not an Italian, Billy,” he concluded. “He’s a Mexican.”

“Who said he was an Eyetalian?” demanded Byrne.

As the two Americans and the Mexican conversed within the hut there approached across the dusty flat, from the direction of the nearer hills, a party of five horsemen.

They rode rapidly, coming toward the hut from the side which had neither door nor window, so that those within had no warning of their coming. They were swarthy, ragged ruffians, fully armed, and with an equipment which suggested that they might be a part of a quasi-military organization.

Close behind the hut four of them dismounted while the fifth, remaining in his saddle, held the bridle reins of the horses of his companions. The latter crept stealthily around the outside of the building, toward the door—their carbines ready in their hands.

It was one of the little children who first discovered the presence of the newcomers. With a piercing scream she bolted into the interior and ran to cling to her mother’s skirts.

Billy, Bridge, and the Mexican wheeled toward the doorway simultaneously to learn the cause of the girl’s fright, and as they did so found themselves covered by four carbines in the hands of as many men.

As his eyes fell upon the faces of the intruders the countenance of the Mexican fell, while his wife dropped to the floor and embraced his knees, weeping.

“Wotinell?” ejaculated Billy Byrne. “What’s doin’?”

“We seem to have been made prisoners,” suggested Bridge; “but whether by Villistas or Carranzistas I do not know.”

Their host understood his words and turned toward the two Americans.

“These are Pesita’s men,” he said.

“Yes,” spoke up one of the bandits, “we are Pesita’s men, and Pesita will be delighted, Miguel, to greet you, especially when he sees the sort of company you have been keeping. You know how much Pesita loves the gringos!”

“But this man does not even know us,” spoke up Bridge. “We stopped here to get a meal. He never saw us before. We are on our way to the El Orobo Rancho in search of work. We have no money and have broken no laws. Let us go our way in peace. You can gain nothing by detaining us, and as for Miguel here—that is what you called him, I believe—I think from what he said to us that he loves a gringo about as much as your revered chief seems to.”

Miguel looked his appreciation of Bridge’s defense of him; but it was evident that he did not expect it to bear fruit. Nor did it. The brigand spokesman only grinned sardonically.

“You may tell all this to Pesita himself, senor,” he said. “Now come—get a move on—beat it!” The fellow had once worked in El Paso and took great pride in his “higher English” education.

As he started to herd them from the hut Billy demurred. He turned toward Bridge.

“Most of this talk gets by me,” he said. “I ain’t jerry to all the Dago jabber yet, though I’ve copped off a little of it in the past two weeks. Put me wise to the gink’s lay.”

“Elementary, Watson, elementary,” replied Bridge. “We are captured by bandits, and they are going to take us to their delightful chief who will doubtless have us shot at sunrise.”

“Bandits?” snapped Billy, with a sneer. “Youse don’t call dese little runts bandits?”

“Baby bandits, Billy, baby bandits,” replied Bridge.

“An’ you’re goin’ to stan’ fer lettin’ ‘em pull off this rough stuff without handin’ ‘em a come-back?” demanded Byrne.

“We seem to be up against just that very thing,” said Bridge. “There are four carbines quite ready for us. It would mean sudden death to resist now. Later we may find an opportunity—I think we’d better act simple and wait.” He spoke in a quick, low whisper, for the spokesman of the brigands evidently understood a little English and was on the alert for any trickery.

Billy shrugged, and when their captors again urged them forward he went quietly; but the expression on his face might have perturbed the Mexicans had they known Billy Byrne of Grand Avenue better—he was smiling happily.

Miguel had two ponies in his corral. These the brigands appropriated, placing Billy upon one and Miguel and Bridge upon the other. Billy’s great weight rendered it inadvisable to double him up with another rider.

As they were mounting Billy leaned toward Bridge and whispered:

“I’ll get these guys, pal—watch me,” he said.

“I am with thee, William!—horse, foot, and artillery,” laughed Bridge.

“Which reminds me,” said Billy, “that I have an ace-in-the-hole —the boobs never frisked me.”

“And I am reminded,” returned Bridge, as the horses started off to the yank of hackamore ropes in the hands of the brigands who were leading them, “of a touching little thing of Service’s:

Just think! Some night the stars will gleam Upon a cold gray stone, And trace a name with silver beam, And lo! ‘twill be your own.

“You’re a cheerful guy,” was Billy’s only comment.