“I warn you now,” Baca advised. “Do not follow me another step. I’m going.”
Jones burst into joyous laughter with so free and unfeigned a note that Baca turned again.
“Come!” cried Jones. “I know what you think I’m going to say—that before I started I left a sealed envelope with a friend and told him if I didn’t come back by X o’clock to break the seal and be guided by the contents—that’s what you thought I’d say. But you’re wrong!” Unhesitatingly he took the few steps separating him from that silent, angry figure in the starlight. “Nobody knows what I’m up to but you and me and God, and you’re not right sure. So don’t waste any more breath on warnings. I’m warned—and you are!”
Without a word Baca turned at right angles to his homeward course, and led the way swiftly up the dark and steep street to a dark and silent quarter of the Mexican suburb. Toward the street, these old adobe homes presented a blank wall; windows, and all doors save one, fronting on the inclosed patio.
“It’s like this,” said Jones cheerfully, pressing along the narrow way a yard behind: “I had a nice little bunch of cows—nigh onto two hundred—out in the Monuments. And Bennett, he was projecting about like a roarin’ lion out there; and he says: ‘Jones, why don’t you buy the Bar Nothing brand?’ ‘No money,’ says I.... I say, Baca, don’t go so fast! This ain’t no Marathon! Lonesome, shivery place, isn’t it?”
The silent figure walked still swifter.
“Oh, all right, then! ‘I’ll lend you the money,’ says Bennett, ‘an’ take a mortgage on both brands.’ ‘There’ll come a drought,’ says I, ‘and them cattle will lay down and die on me, a lot of ’em; and I’ll find myself in a fix.’ And he did, and they did, and I did.”
No word from Baca. In the black shadow of the dark unlighted houses he passed swiftly and unhesitatingly. Jones continued:
“Since that I paid him all but eighteen hundred-odd; and now the mortgage comes due pretty sudden, and I stand to lose both brands.... Say, Baca, where’re you takin’ me to? Some gang of thugs? You can do that all right—but I’ll get you first and I’ll get you hard, and I’ll get you sure! Don’t make any mistake!”
Baca gave way to his feelings.