"Never mind where I got it!" answered Hooker. "The question is: What did you do with it?"
"Well, I might as well come through with it," confessed Phil, the last of his assurance gone. "I gave it to Gracia!"
"And I took it away from Aragon," continued Bud, "while he was digging some more chunks out of our mine. So that is your idea of being true as steel, is it? You've done noble by me and Kruger, haven't you? Yes, you've been a good pardner, I don't think!"
"Well, don't throw me down, Bud!" pleaded Phil. "There's some mistake somewhere. Her father must have found it and taken it away! I'd stake my life on it that Gracia would never betray me!"
"Well, think it over for a while," suggested Bud, edging his words with sarcasm. "I'm going up to the hotel!"
"No; come back!" cried De Lancey, clamoring at the bars. "Come on back, Bud! Here!" he said, thrusting his hand out through the heavy irons. "I'll give you my word for it—I won't see her again until we get our title! Will that satisfy you? Then give me your hand, pardner—I'm sorry I did you wrong!"
"It ain't me," replied Hooker soberly, as he took the trembling hand; "it's Kruger. But if you'll keep your word, Phil, maybe we can win out yet. I'm going up to find the comisario."
A brief interview with that smiling individual and the case of Phil De Lancey was laid bare. He had been engaged in a desperate rivalry with Manuel del Rey for the hand of Gracia Aragon, and his present incarceration was not only for singing rag-time beneath the Aragon windows, but for trying to whip the captain of the rurales when the latter tried to place him under arrest.
And De Lancey was the prisoner not of the comisario, but of the captain of the rurales. Sore at heart, Bud rode up through the Mexican quarters to the cuartel of the rurales, but the captain was inexorable.
"No, señor," he said, waving an eloquent finger before his nose, "I cannot release your friend. No, señor."