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

having been furnished with pajamas Bridge had not thought it necessary to remove his clothing, and so he had lost no time in dressing.

When the two, now joined by Benito, reached the street they found the guard there, battering in the bank doors. Benito, fearing for the life of Tony, which if anyone took should be taken by him, rushed upon the sergeant of the guard, explaining with both lips and hands the remarkable accident which had precipitated Tony into the bank.

The sergeant listened, though he did not believe, and when the doors had fallen in, he commanded Tony to come out with his hands above his head. Then followed an investigation which disclosed the looting of the safe, and the great hole in the ceiling through which Tony had tumbled.

The bank president came while the sergeant and the landlord were in Billy’s room investigating. Bridge had followed them.

“It was the gringo,” cried the excited Boniface. “This is his room. He has cut a hole in my floor which I shall have to pay to have repaired.”

A captain came next, sleepy-eyed and profane. When he heard what had happened and that the wealth which he had been detailed to guard had been taken while he slept, he tore his hair and promised that the sentry should be shot at dawn.

By the time they had returned to the street all the male population of Cuivaca was there and most of the female.

“One-thousand dollars,” cried the bank president, “to the man who stops the thief and returns to me what the villain has stolen.”

A detachment of soldiers was in the saddle and passing the bank as the offer was made.

“Which way did he go?” asked the captain. “Did no one see him leave?”

Bridge was upon the point of saying that he had seen him and that he had ridden north, when it occurred to him that a thousand dollars—even a thousand dollars Mex—was a great deal of money, and that it would carry both himself and Billy to Rio and leave something for pleasure beside.

Then up spoke a tall, thin man with the skin of a coffee bean.

“I saw him, Senor Capitan,” he cried. “He kept his horse in my corral, and at night he came and took it out saying that he was riding to visit a senorita. He fooled me, the scoundrel; but I will tell you—he rode south. I saw him ride south with my own eyes.”

“Then we shall have him before morning,” cried the captain, “for there is but one place to the south where a robber would ride, and he has not had sufficient start of us that he can reach safety before we overhaul him. Forward! March!” and the detachment moved down the narrow street. “Trot! March!” And as they passed the store: “Gallop! March!”

Bridge almost ran the length of the street to the corral. His pony must be rested by now, and a few miles to the north the gringo whose capture meant a thousand dollars to Bridge was on the road to liberty.

“I hate to do it,” thought Bridge; “because, even if he is a bank robber, he’s an American; but I need the money and in all probability the fellow is a scoundrel who should have been hanged long ago.”

Over the trail to the north rode Captain Billy Byrne, secure in the belief that no pursuit would develop until after the opening hour of the bank in the morning, by which time he would be halfway on his return journey to Pesita’s camp.

“Ol’ man Pesita’ll be some surprised when I show him what I got for him,” mused Billy. “Say!” he exclaimed suddenly and aloud, “Why the devil should I take all this swag back to that yellow-faced yegg? Who pulled this thing off anyway? Why me, of course, and does anybody think Billy Byrne’s boob enough to split with a guy that didn’t have a hand in it at all. Split! Why the nut’ll take it all!

“Nix! Me for the border. I couldn’t do a thing with all this coin down in Rio, an’ Bridgie’ll be along there most any time. We can hit it up some in lil’ ol’ Rio on this bunch o’ dough. Why, say kid, there must be a million here, from the weight of it.”

A frown suddenly clouded his face. “Why did I take it?” he asked himself. “Was I crackin’ a safe, or was I pullin’ off something fine fer poor, bleedin’ Mexico? If I was a-doin’ that they ain’t nothin’ criminal in what I done—except to the guy that owned the coin. If I was just plain crackin’ a safe on my own hook why then I’m a crook again an’ I can’t be that— no, not with that face of yours standin’ out there so plain right in front of me, just as though you were there yourself, askin’ me to remember an’ be decent. God! Barbara—why wasn’t I born for the likes of you, and not just a measly, ornery mucker like I am. Oh, hell! what is that that Bridge sings of Knibbs’s:

There ain’t no sweet Penelope somewhere that’s longing much for me, But I can smell the blundering sea, and hear the rigging hum; And I can hear the whispering lips that fly before the out-bound ships, And I can hear the breakers on the sand a-calling “Come!”

Billy took off his hat and scratched his head.

“Funny,” he thought, “how a girl and poetry can get a tough nut like me. I wonder what the guys that used to hang out in back of Kelly’s ‘ud say if they seen what was goin’ on in my bean just now. They’d call me Lizzy, eh? Well, they wouldn’t call me Lizzy more’n once. I may be gettin’ soft in the head, but I’m all to the good with my dukes.”

Speed is not conducive to sentimental thoughts and so Billy had unconsciously permitted his pony to drop into a lazy walk. There was no need for haste anyhow. No one knew yet that the bank had been robbed, or at least so Billy argued. He might, however, have thought differently upon the subject of haste could he have had a glimpse of the horseman in his rear—two miles behind him, now, but rapidly closing up the distance at a keen gallop, while he strained his eyes across the moonlit flat ahead in eager search for his quarry.

So absorbed was Billy Byrne in his reflections that his ears were deaf to the pounding of the hoofs of the pursuer’s horse upon the soft dust of the dry road until Bridge was little more than a hundred yards from him. For the last half-mile Bridge had had the figure of the fugitive in full view and his mind had been playing rapidly with seductive visions of the one-thousand dollars reward—one-thousand dollars Mex, perhaps, but still quite enough to excite pleasant thoughts. At the first glimpse of the horseman ahead Bridge had reined his mount down to a trot that the noise of his approach might thereby be lessened. He had drawn his revolver from its holster, and was upon the point of putting spurs to his horse for a sudden dash upon the fugitive when the man ahead, finally attracted by the noise of the other’s approach, turned in his saddle and saw him.

Neither recognized the other, and at Bridge’s command of, “Hands up!” Billy, lightning-like in his quickness, drew and fired. The bullet raked Bridge’s hat from his head but left him unscathed.

Billy had wheeled his pony around until he stood broadside toward Bridge. The latter fired scarce a second after Billy’s shot had pinged so perilously close—fired at a perfect target but fifty yards away.

At the sound of the report the robber’s horse reared and plunged, then, wheeling and tottering high upon its hind feet, fell backward. Billy, realizing that his mount had been hit, tried to throw himself from the saddle; but until the very moment that the beast toppled over the man was held by his cartridge belt which, as the animal first lunged, had caught over the high horn of the Mexican saddle.

The belt slipped from the horn as the horse was falling, and Billy succeeded in throwing himself a little to one side. One leg, however, was pinned beneath the animal’s body and the force of the fall jarred the revolver from Billy’s hand to drop just beyond his reach.

His carbine was in its boot at the horse’s side, and the animal was lying upon it. Instantly Bridge rode to his side and covered him with his revolver.

“Don’t move,” he commanded, “or I’ll be under the painful necessity of terminating your earthly endeavors right here and now.”

“Well, for the love o’ Mike!” cried the fallen bandit “You?”

Bridge was off his horse the instant that the familiar voice sounded in his ears.

“Billy!” he exclaimed. “Why—Billy—was it you who robbed the bank?”

Even as he spoke Bridge was busy easing the weight of the dead pony from Billy’s leg.

“Anything broken?” he asked as the bandit struggled to free himself.

“Not so you could notice it,” replied Billy, and a moment later he was on his feet. “Say, bo,” he added, “it’s a mighty good thing you dropped little pinto here, for I’d a sure got you my next shot. Gee! it makes me sweat to think of it. But about this bank robbin’ business. You can’t exactly say that I robbed a bank. That money was the enemy’s resources, an’ I just nicked their resources. That’s war. That ain’t robbery. I ain’t takin’ it for myself—it’s for the cause—the cause o’ poor, bleedin’ Mexico,” and Billy grinned a large grin.

“You took it for Pesita?” asked Bridge.

“Of course,” replied Billy. “I won’t get a jitney of it. I wouldn’t take none of it, Bridge, honest. I’m on the square now.”

“I know you are, Billy,” replied the other; “but if you’re caught you might find it difficult to convince the authorities of your highmindedness and your disinterestedness.”

“Authorities!” scoffed Billy. “There ain’t no authorities in Mexico. One bandit is just as good as another, and from Pesita to Carranza they’re all bandits at heart. They ain’t a one of ‘em that gives two whoops in hell for poor, bleedin’ Mexico— unless they can do the bleedin’ themselves. It’s dog eat dog here. If they caught me they’d shoot me whether I’d robbed their bank or not. What’s that?” Billy was suddenly alert, straining his eyes back in the direction of Cuivaca.

“They’re coming, Billy,” said Bridge. “Take my horse —quick! You must get out of here in a hurry. The whole post is searching for you. I thought that they went toward the south, though. Some of them must have circled.”

“What’ll you do if I take your horse?” asked Billy.

“I can walk back,” said Bridge, “it isn’t far to town. I’ll tell them that I had come only a short distance when my horse threw me and ran away. They’ll believe it for they think I’m a rotten horseman—the two vaqueros who escorted me to town I mean.”

Billy hesitated. “I hate to do it, Bridge,” he said.

“You must, Billy,” urged the other.

“If they find us here together it’ll merely mean that the two of us will get it, for I’ll stick with you, Billy, and we can’t fight off a whole troop of cavalry out here in the open. If you take my horse we can both get out of it, and later I’ll see you in Rio. Goodbye, Billy, I’m off for town,” and Bridge turned and started back along the road on foot.

Billy watched him in silence for a moment. The truth of Bridge’s statement of fact was so