“No, I don’t think so,” replied Bill. “They went off in a hurry, did they not, and forgot to take some of their things with them. We have made thirty thousand dollars this trip, and that is something worth having.”
“Yes, an’ that dog-gone muel got away from us. I expect that lucky feller at the ranch will have him.”
“Well, we can’t help that. And if I don’t find the money this time, I have got something else in store for Bob. I’ll pounce on him every chance, and steal his cattle by piece-meal, until he is driven from the country. And I wish to goodness that he had never come into it.”
“Here, too! I don’t believe there was any half a million dollars wrapped up in his hide.”
“Oh, yes! there was. But we can’t touch it now. Those men have been to Austin and got the will probated——”
“What do you mean by that?”
“They have been to Austin and got it proved, and the property is all in Bob’s name. What we would have done if we had captured Bob in the place of this Carlos, I don’t know. Henderson thinks he could have got Bob to sign the money over to him, but what good would it have done? They’d say right away that we had gained the signature by fraud, and then we would have a war on our hands, I bet you. As it is, we can keep on stealing cattle; we will have a few Rangers to whip, and that’s all it will amount to. I am going to bed.”
I do not know that I was in any condition to produce sleep, surrounded as I was by men who had talked with satisfaction of seeing me tortured at sunrise; but it is a fact that, as soon as Coyote Bill sought his blankets, I sank into an untroubled slumber, from which I was awakened by Bill’s shaking me and ordering me to catch up. I started up, only to find that somebody had thrown a blanket over me while I was asleep, and to see that the camp of Indians was gone, and that there was no one in sight except Coyote Bill, his man Gentleman Jack,—I did not know what else to call him,—and Henderson.
“They have all gone away with the cattle,” said Bill, noting my feelings of surprise. “You wouldn’t have us stay around here with eight hundred head of stock to be captured, would you? They have gone off to the Staked Plains.”
I noticed while Coyote Bill was talking that the guns were scattered all around, and you will, no doubt, wonder that I did not catch one of them up and turn the tables on them. There was a price of five thousand dollars set upon the head of Coyote Bill, and it would have been a fine thing for me to march them all in as prisoners, but I knew a story worth two of that. One was, I didn’t know how many pistols Bill had about his person; another was, there might be some men in camp a short distance away who would upend me before I fairly got the gun pointed; and furthermore, I was firmly convinced that if I did just as I was told to do, my release would come in good time, and without the necessity of shedding anybody’s blood. I tell you it stands a fellow well in hand to take all these points into consideration.