It was dusk when Mr. Shorter returned from Holliday, but after he had heard his wife’s story he said that he’d drive “them two byes” all the way to Mexico, if there wasn’t any better plan.
“Dodson’s far enough,” Bridge assured him, and late that night the grateful farmer set them down at their destination.
An hour later they were speeding south on the Missouri Pacific.
Bridge lay back, luxuriously, on the red plush of the smoker seat.
“Some class to us, eh, bo?” asked Billy.
Bridge stretched.
The tide-hounds race far up the shore—the hunt is on! The breakers roar!
Her spars are tipped with gold, and o’er her deck the spray is flung;
The buoys that frolic in the bay, they nod the way, they nod the way!
The hunt is up! I am the prey! The hunter’s bow is strung!
VI
“Baby Bandits”
It was twenty-four hours before Detective Sergeant Flannagan awoke to the fact that something had been put over on him, and that a Kansas farmer’s wife had done the putting.
He managed to piece it out finally from the narratives of the two tramps, and when he had returned to the Shorter home and listened to the contradictory and whole-souled improvisations of Shorter père and mère he was convinced.
Whereupon he immediately telegraphed Chicago headquarters and obtained the necessary authority to proceed upon the trail of the fugitive, Byrne.
And so it was that Sergeant Flannagan landed in El Paso a few days later, drawn thither by various pieces of intelligence he had gathered en route, though with much delay and consequent vexation.
Even after he had quitted the train he was none too sure that he was upon the right trail though he at once repaired to a telegraph office and wired his chief that he was hot on the trail of the fugitive.
As a matter of fact he was much hotter than he imagined, for Billy and Bridge were that very minute not two squares from him, debating as to the future and the best manner of meeting it before it arrived.
“I think,” said Billy, “that I’ll duck across the border. I won’t never be safe in little old U.S., an’ with things hoppin’ in Mexico the way they have been for the last few years I orter be able to lose myself pretty well.
“Now you’re all right, ol’ top. You don’t have to duck nothin’ for you ain’t did nothin’. I don’t know what you’re runnin’ away from; but I know it ain’t nothin’ the police is worryin’ about—I can tell that by the way you act—so I guess we’ll split here. You’d be a boob to cross if you don’t have to, fer if Villa don’t get you the Carranzistas will, unless the Zapatistas nab you first.
“Comin’ or goin’ some greasy-mugged highbinder’s bound to croak you if you cross, from what little I’ve heard since we landed in El Paso.
“We’ll feed up together tonight, fer the last time. Then I’ll pull my freight.” He was silent for a while, and then: “I hate to do it, bo, fer you’re the whitest guy I ever struck,” which was a great deal for Billy Byrne of Grand Avenue to say.
Bridge finished rolling a brown paper cigarette before he spoke.
“Your words are pure and unadulterated wisdom, my friend,” he said. “The chances are scarcely even that two gringo hoboes would last the week out afoot and broke in Viva Mexico; but it has been many years since I followed the dictates of wisdom. Therefore I am going with you.”
Billy grinned. He could not conceal his pleasure.
“You’re past twenty-one,” he said, “an’ dry behind the ears. Let’s go an’ eat. There is still some of that twenty-five left.”
Together they entered a saloon which Bridge remembered as permitting a very large consumption of free lunch upon the purchase of a single schooner of beer.
There were round tables scattered about the floor in front of the bar, and after purchasing their beer they carried it to one of these that stood in a far corner of the room close to a rear door.
Here Bridge sat on guard over the foaming open sesame to food while Billy crossed to the free lunch counter and appropriated all that a zealous attendant would permit him to carry off.
When he returned to the table he took a chair with his back to the wall in conformity to a habit of long standing when, as now, it had stood him in good stead to be in a position to see the other fellow at least as soon as the other fellow saw him. The other fellow being more often than not a large gentleman with a bit of shiny metal pinned to his left suspender strap.
“That guy’s a tight one,” said Billy, jerking his hand in the direction of the guardian of the free lunch. “I scoops up about a good, square meal for a canary bird, an’ he makes me cough up half of it. Wants to know if I t’ink I can go into the restaurant business on a fi’-cent schooner of suds.”
Bridge laughed.
“Well, you didn’t do so badly at that,” he said. “I know places where they’d indict you for grand larceny if you took much more than you have here.”
“Rotten beer,” commented Billy.
“Always is rotten down here,” replied Bridge. “I sometimes think they put moth balls in it so it won’t spoil.”
Billy looked up and smiled. Then he raised his tall glass before him.
“Here’s to,” he started; but he got no further. His eyes
