“You were hunting,” he told him slowly and impressively, “and you dropped your gun and shot yourself. Sabes?”
The man nodded.
“How much were you paid to kill me, friend?” Ramon then asked.
The man looked at the pommel of the saddle, and his swarthy face darkened with a heavy flush.
“One hundred dollars,” he admitted. “I needed the money to christen a child. Could I let my child go to hell? But I did not mean to kill you. Only to beat you, so you would go away. Do not ask who sent me, for the love of God.…”
“I ask nothing more, friend,” Ramon assured [pg 182] him. “And since you were to have a hundred dollars for making me leave the country, here is a hundred dollars for not succeeding.”
Both of them laughed. Ramon then rode on and delivered the man to his excited and grateful wife. He went back to his camp very weary and sore, but feeling that he had done an excellent stroke of work for his purpose.