The bitterness of his fate swept over Pecos at the words—he looked down at his crumpled clothes, his outworn boots, and faded shirt and rumbled in his throat.
"No, Marcelina," he said, "I'm only a caged wolf—a coyote that the vaqueros have roped and tied and fastened to a tree. I'm a hard-looker, all right—how'd you come to find me?"
She laid a brown hand against the bars as if in protest and motioned him nearer the screen
She laid a brown hand against the bars as if in protest and motioned him nearer the screen.
"I have only been in town four days," she said hurriedly. "All summer I was shut up at Verde, and Ol' Creet—ah, that bad, ba-ad man! My mother took me to school the day he come to Geronimo. I am 'fraid, Paycos—but this morning I run away to see you. The seesters will be hunt for me now. Look Paycos"—she thrust her hand into the bosom of her dress and drew forth a small bundle, wrapped in a blue silk handkerchief—"Cuidado, be careful," she whispered; "when I keess you good-bye at the door I weel put thees een your hand—ssst!" She turned and looked up the corridor where the deputy was doing the Sherlock. He was a new man—the jail deputy—just helping out during the session of the court and correspondingly impressed with his own importance. Nothing larger than a darning-needle could be passed through the heavy iron screen, but all the same he kept his eye on them, and when he saw the quick thrust of her hand all the suspicions of the amateur sleuth rushed over him at once.
"Hey! What's that?" he demanded, striding down the run-around. "What you got hid there, eh?" He ogled Marcelina threateningly as he stood over her and she shrank before his glance like a school-girl. "Come, now," he blustered, "show me what that is or I'll take it away from you. We don't allow anything to be passed in to the prisoners!"
"She can't pass nothin' through here!" interposed Pecos, tapping on the screen. "You haven't got nothin', have you, Marcelina?"