"If I let you go now, you'll keep away from the señorita in future? You'll never trouble her again?"
Murillo choked, but his fear caused him to take the oath.
Badger dropped the wretch in an upright position, turned him down the aisle, gave him a start, and said:
"Don't look back! Keep on going just as far as you can go on this train! Get into the rear car, and if you show your cowardly mug around here again, I'll kick you clean up through the top of your hat! You hear my promise, I opine."
Murillo heard it, and he kept on going until he had vanished from the car.
Barney Mulloy fairly quivered with laughter.
"Be heavins, Badger," he chuckled, "ye know how to handle a shnake! It's a relation to St. Pathrick ye are, and he drove all the shnakes out av Oireland. Hereafther you're St. Buck, begobs!"
"St. Buck is a heap good," laughed the Westerner, as he shook hands with his old friends, removed his broad-brimmed Stetson, and made a sweeping bow to the girls. "Mrs. Badger has a right jolly way of calling me angel sometimes, but, on my word, I can't discover even a pimple of a wing anywhere about me. But, say, people, however is it I find you all here together? Wherever are you bound for?"
"Bloomfield," answered Barney and Ephraim, in chorus.
"We're taking Carker along with us," explained Gallup. "We're all going to see old Frank at Bloomfield, by jinks!"