“Si, Senor,” breathed Ramon.
Jack in turn whispered to Captain Murray. The latter frowned thoughtfully for a second or two, then his eyes brightened, and he turned to Hannaford. The other stooped from his greater height, and the three put their heads together. The other Americans regarded them curiously. As for Ramirez he continued to glower while from beneath his lowered lids darted a poisonous glance which fell on Ramon and made the old fellow tremble.
“Come on, you,” said Hannaford, at length, turning to Ramirez; “we’ll just put you where you won’t be no trouble to anybody but yourself.”
With a hand as big as a ham gripping the more slightly built Mexican, Hannaford marched him outside and flung him into one of the taxicabs.
“Where to, Jack?”
“County jail. Step on ’er.”
Behind them, in the office, already Ramon was growing brighter, with Ramirez away. And now he no longer hesitated to answer questions, for Jack assured him that Ramirez would be sent to the Federal Penitentiary for violation of a national law, and that years would elapse before he would ever be free again.
“Senor Jack,” said Ramon, addressing Jack in Spanish, “you ask yourself why Ramon abandons you at the ranch? Ah, you do not know, you do not know that devil’s power? Once I was a bandit; that was years ago. Then I went to the Estados Unidos and became respectable. Senor, when I go to the village that day to buy supplies for our ranch, two lieutenants of Ramirez encounter me. Aye, Senor, those same two—Andreas and Jose—whom I fight and overcome in the car, myself, alone, single-handed, as you arrive.”
He thumped his chest, and Jack with difficulty restrained a burst of laughter. From behind him, where the others crowded close, came a tittering which betrayed that others were not so heedful of the old man’s feelings. But Ramon paid them no heed.
“Andreas and Jose tell me they have a fine job for me, Senor Jack, and when I decline and inform them I already have the fine job, they compel me to go with them. Of a certainty, I, Ramon, would have fought them then, except that they were armed while I had not even a knife.