"That's the fellow that followed us off on the night we went to your rancho after that money box," said Fletcher. "He's just lightning, and if some of those rich fellows down there with Max don't offer me something handsome for him, I'll keep him myself."
"It must be the stolen horse that goes by the name of Silk Stocking," thought George. "I wonder if he would let me catch him? If he would, I could get Ned out of one scrape easily enough."
"I reckon you won't be lonesome to-night while I am gone, will you?" continued Fletcher, as he led the way into one of the rooms in which a dozen or more guerrillas were sitting on the floor eating their supper of broiled beef and tortillas. These, as George afterward learned, were the men whom Fletcher had selected to accompany him on a raid he intended to make that night. "Well, I can't help it if you are lonesome, for business is business, and has got to be attended to while the moon shines. We can't go but two or three times more, and then we'll have to stop for a whole month," added the boss cattle-thief, with a deep sigh of regret.
"That knocks me," said George, to himself. "I can't carry out my plans while these fellows are off on a raid, for while I am looking around for a ford I might run right into them. If I don't succeed in the very first attempt I am done for." Then aloud he said: "You'll not hurt any body while you are gone, will you?"
"Not if we can help it," replied Fletcher, in the most unconcerned manner possible. "We're bound to have the cattle, and those who don't want to get popped over will stay in doors, where they belong."
It was all George could do to refrain from telling the nonchalant robber that things would not always be so—that if he lived, he would see the day that he could not rob and shoot honest settlers without being followed across the river and punished wherever he was found—and if he had told him so, he would have uttered nothing but the truth. The time did come, sure enough, and Fletcher lived to see it, when the simple crossing of the Rio Grande did not insure the safety of the raiders. They were pursued into their own territory and soundly thrashed there, and George Ackerman himself was the first guide who led the troops in the pursuit. But, angry as he was, the boy did not give utterance to the thoughts that were flashing through his mind. He knew that it would be folly to irritate the guerrilla, for the latter might put him in close confinement, and then there would be no such thing as escape for him.
Supper over, the cattle-thieves went out to saddle their horses, and when everything was ready for the start, they mounted and rode away, Fletcher pausing long enough to ask his captive if he had any word to send across the river. George replied that he had not, adding, in undertone;
"I wish I could send word to the settlers to be on the alert, to give you the worst whipping you ever had."
But, if George had only known it, there was no need of sending warning to the settlers. Fletcher came back just before daylight with no cattle, and three men less than he had when he went out. The noise the guerrillas made on their return awoke George, who gleaned from the few scraps of their conversation that he was able to catch, that they had had their trouble for their pains—that the ranchemen were waiting for them, and whipped them beautifully before they fairly gained a footing on Texas soil.
"Good for the ranchemen," thought George, as he rolled himself up in his blanket and tried to find an easy place for his head on his hard pillow. "If that is the way they are going to do business, it will be a long time before you get your pay for making a prisoner of me."