CHAPTER IX
ACROSS THE BORDER
Yes, there he was, just ahead of me on the platform of the Union Depot in Kansas City, my partner, James Terry Gardiner, who had wired me to meet him there a few weeks after I had closed the sale of our Deadman Ranch, in November, 1882. While his back was turned to me, there was no mistaking the lean but sturdy figure and alert step.
From the vigorous slap of cordiality I gave him on his shoulder, he winced and shrank, crying: "Oh, please don't, old man. Been sleeping in Mexican northers for a fortnight, and it's got my shoulder muscles tied in rheumatic knots. Don Nemecio Garcia started me off from Lampadasos with the assurance that my ambulance was generously provisioned and provided with his own camp-bed, but when night of the first day's journey came, I found the food limited to tortillas, chorisos, and coffee, and the bed a sheepskin—no more. Stupid of an old campaigner not to investigate his equipment before starting, was it not?"
"Worse than that, I should say—sheer madness," I answered. "How did it happen?"
"Well, you see, Don Nemecio is the Alcalde, of his city, and he showered me with such grandiloquent Spanish phrases of concern for my comfort that I fancied he had outfitted me in extraordinary luxury.
"But that's over now, thank goodness. And now to business.
"In the north of the State of Coahuila, one hundred miles west of the Rio Grande border, lies the little town called Villa de Musquiz. To the north and west of it for two hundred miles stretches the great plain the natives call El Desierto, known on the map as Bolson de Mapini, the resort of none but bandits, smuggler Lipans, and Mescaleros. Into it the natives never venture, and little of it is known except the scant information brought back by the scouting cavalry details.
"Just south of the town lie the Cedral Coal Mines I have been examining—but that is neither here nor there. What I want to know is, are you game for a new ranch deal?"
When I nodded an affirmative, he continued: