“I wish some of the rangers were over here,” exclaimed Billie. “They’d help, I know.”
“Yes,” replied Gen. Sanchez, “but that is impossible. If any American soldiers were to help us it would be almost as bad at this particular time as though they helped the other side. We shall have to do the best we can. I will promise you fifty, and a hundred if possible. Return at 3:30 o’clock and I will give the order.”
“I need a hundred men,” declared Villa as he and Billie left the general’s presence, “and I don’t see how I can do with less.”
“I’ll tell you!” suddenly exclaimed Billie. “Maybe the rangers cannot come as rangers to help rescue Donald and Adrian, but they can come as friends of mine and I believe they will. I have at least five hours to get across the river and bring them back. I am going to try. It is the only way. I wonder if we can find a horse!”
“Cierto!” replied Villa. “We’ll take the first good one we see!”
This they did, and ten minutes later Billie was again headed for the American shore.
Billie had been over the ground between Presidio and Presidio del Norte so many times that he
thought he knew it perfectly, and as a result, although the night was dark, he put spurs to his mount and was quickly beyond the Federal outposts.
But the horse Billie was riding was not Jupiter. He was undoubtedly a good horse, as the speed at which he went fully testified. But it is one thing to have a horse that understands English and another to have one that understands only Mexican, as Billie soon discovered.
The horse which Billie had mounted at Pancho’s suggestion was Mexican clear through. He had never been across the Rio Grande, nor had he the slightest knowledge of the ground over which he was running. He had come from the south only twenty-four hours before, and, despite all that Billie could do, he insisted in bearing away from the river. Time and again Billie forced him back into the right direction, as he thought, but after half an hour’s hard riding, which should have brought him to the spot where the boys had landed from the boat, there was no river in sight.