“I tell you we would have made short work with him,” added Frank. “The idea that this Coyote Bill could come around here and bum around as he has! It’s scandalous!”
“I didn’t know that his name was Coyote Bill until Elam spoke it out,” returned Mr. Davenport. “Where he got it, I don’t know.”
“Then, Elam, we’ll have to take you to task for that.”
“I didn’t know it until just as we were washing for supper,” explained Elam, “an’ then Carlos told me.”
“What have you to say to that, Carlos?”
“I didn’t know it myself until Bill proposed that I should steal that pocket-book before to-morrow night,” said I; and somehow I couldn’t help feeling uneasy by the determined way the two cowboys plied their questions. “He surprised me so suddenly that I spoke the first words that came into my mind. I knew then that he was going to make an attempt to steal it after we had gone to bed, and so I told Elam that he would have to keep awake and stop it. That was the reason that Elam got those two shots at him.”
“Well, it is a mighty funny thing how a man of that reputation could come here and pass himself off for an honest miner!” said Lem.
“If you had the cheek that man’s got you could do anything,” I continued. “He said I ought to be one of them. If he means by that, that I ought to join one of his bands and make my living by stealing cattle, he’s a long ways out of his reach.”
“You will find the boys all right, because I have confided in them,” said Mr. Davenport. “And now I have confided in you. Don’t tell what I have told you, please, and as soon as I get to Trinity I will ride down to Austin and have this affair settled up. I did not suppose that man would trouble me away out here in Texas.”
“Father,” said Bob, who had listened in speechless wonderment to all the trouble he had caused, “you ought to have left me in the mines. You have had lots of bother on account of me.”