"Horrible," muttered Peter.
"It was. I reckon I died—the soul of me, or what was left of it. I came to life under the starlight, with a couple of 'greasers' droppin' water on my tongue. They brought me around, but I was out of my head for a week. I couldn't talk the lingo anyhow. I just went with 'em like a child. There wasn't anything else to do. Lucky they didn't kill me. I guess I wasn't worth killin'. We went South. They were makin' for Hermosillo. Revolutionists. They took all my money—about three hundred dollars. But it was worth it. They'd saved my life. But I couldn't go back now, even if I wanted to. I had no money, nor any way of gettin' any."
Jim Coast leaned forward, glowering at the rag carpet.
"But I—I didn't want to go back just then. The fear of God was in me. I'd looked into Hell."
He laughed bitterly.
"Then I joined the 'greasers' against Diaz. I've told you about that. And the 'Rurales' cleaned us up all right. A girl saved my life. Instead of shootin' me against a mud wall, they put me to work on a railroad. I was there three years. I escaped at last and reached the coast, where I shipped for South America. It was the only way out, but all the while I was thinkin' of Mike McGuire and the copper mine. You know the rest, Pete—the Argentine deal that might of made me rich an' how it fell through. Don't it beat Hell how the world bites the under dog!"
"But why didn't you go back to America and fight your claim with McGuire?" asked Peter, aware of the sinister, missing passage in the story.
Coast shot a sharp glance at his questioner.
"There were two reasons—one of which you won't know. The other was that I couldn't. I was on the beach an' not too popular. The only ships out of Buenos Aires were for London. That was the easiest way back to America anyhow. So I shipped as a cattle hand. And there you are. I lived easy in London. That's me. Easy come easy go. There it was I wrote a man I knew out in Bisbee—the feller that helped stake us—and he answered me that McGuire was dead, and that the mine was a flivver—too far away to work. You see he must of showed the letter to McGuire, and McGuire told him what to write. That threw me off the track. I forgot him and went to France...."
Coast paused while he filled his glass again.