Twenty minutes later he reached the station at Pitahaya where he had expected to find Adrian and the three Mexicans awaiting him, but, as we know, they had gone on to the scene of the wreck. Not realizing just what had happened, but always on the alert for the unexpected, Billie, therefore, began an inspection of the station.
It did not take him long to discover that Pitahaya was little more than a siding with a one-room building, which was used as a freight house and a waiting room. It did not even boast of a station master.
"There must be some reason for having a building here," he mused. "There must be some sort of a settlement around somewhere. But what's that to me? I might as well be jogging along towards Pachuca."
Then he bethought him of the ape, which he had no mind to lose after his exciting experience. But the animal was nowhere to be seen.
"I wonder if I could raise him with a shot," soliloquized Billie.
He raised his weapon, which he still carried in his hand, and fired aimlessly, while he turned his eyes in various directions, but there was nothing to be seen.
"Oh, well," he thought, "what's the difference? He'd just be a nuisance anyway. I might as well be trudging along."
He jumped off the station platform and proceeded down the track, filling the magazine to his automatic as he went. Then having finished the task, he returned it to his holster and once more began counting the ties.
"One, two, three, four, five, six——"
Bing! And a stone whistled by his head.