第95章

Bridge lay back again upon his pillows and sought to woo the slumber which the sudden awakening seemed to have banished for the remainder of the night.

And up the stairway to the second floor staggered Tony and Benito.Their money was gone; but they had acquired something else which appeared much more difficult to carry and not so easily gotten rid of.

Tony held the key to their room.It was the second room upon the right of the hall.Tony remembered that very distinctly.

He had impressed it upon his mind before leaving the room earlier in the evening, for Tony had feared some such contingency as that which had befallen.

Tony fumbled with the handle of a door, and stabbed vainly at an elusive keyhole.

"Wait," mumbled Benito."This is not the room.It was the second door from the stairway.This is the third."Tony lurched about and staggered back.Tony reasoned:

"If that was the third door the next behind me must be the second, and on the right;" but Tony took not into consideration that he had reversed the direction of his erratic wobbling.

He lunged across the hall--not because he wished to but because the spirits moved him.He came in contact with a door."This, then, must be the second door," he soliloquized, "and it is upon my right.Ah, Benito, this is the room!"Benito was skeptical.He said as much; but Tony was obdurate.Did he not know a second door when he saw one?

Was he, furthermore, not a grown man and therefore entirely capable of distinguishing between his left hand and his right?

Yes! Tony was all of that, and more, so Tony inserted the key in the lock--it would have turned any lock upon the second floor--and, lo! the door swung inward upon its hinges.

"Ah! Benito," cried Tony."Did I not tell you so? See! This is our room, for the key opens the door."The room was dark.Tony, carried forward by the weight of his head, which had long since grown unaccountably heavy, rushed his feet rapidly forward that he might keep them within a few inches of his center of equilibrium.

The distance which it took his feet to catch up with his head was equal to the distance between the doorway and the foot of the bed, and when Tony reached that spot, with Benito meandering after him, the latter, much to his astonishment, saw in the diffused moonlight which pervaded the room, the miraculous disappearance of his former enemy and erstwhile friend.Then from the depths below came a wild scream and a heavy thud.

The sentry upon the beat before the bank heard both.For an instant he stood motionless, then he called aloud for the guard, and turned toward the bank door.But this was locked and he could but peer in through the windows.Seeing a dark form within, and being a Mexican he raised his rifle and fired through the glass of the doors.

Tony, who had dropped through the hole which Billy had used so quietly, heard the zing of a bullet pass his head, and the impact as it sploshed into the adobe wall behind him.

With a second yell Tony dodged behind the safe and besought Mary to protect him.

From above Benito peered through the hole into the blackness below.Down the hall came the barefoot landlord, awakened by the screams and the shot.Behind him came Bridge, buckling his revolver belt about his hips as he ran.Not 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.