“No doubt of it.”
“If Durbin lives long enough to talk, we may induce him to tell us where Zenas Gunn is to be kept a prisoner.”
“I sure hope so.”
“Then it will be our business to waste no time in finding the professor and setting him free. After that the race for Italy will begin.”
Buckhart was greatly stirred up over the prospect.
“If we permit that Spaniard to get ahead of us, pard, I’ll certain feel like committing suicide some!” he cried. “You made a big mistake when you kept me from taking a crack at him with my gun as he went whooping away from the Robin Hood. If I had bored him——”
“We should have been arrested and compelled to stand trial. It is true we might have been acquitted; but shooting a human being, even though it may be a dastardly dog like Bunol, is mighty bad business, and I don’t believe you wish, any more than I do, to stain your hands with human blood.”
“I punctured Rob MacLane at Lochleven.”
“But it was only a flesh wound in the shoulder, and the authorities, who seemed relieved and pleased over the death of the Strathern outlaw, decided that the cause of his death was not the bullet wound, but came from a broken neck received when he fell from Lochleven Castle.”
“All the same,” muttered the Texan, in a low tone, “I don’t opine he’d taken that fall if I hadn’t fired at him. I saw he was going to murder Aaron by flinging him over, and I didn’t falter any at all in shooting. My conscience hasn’t troubled me much.”