He paced angrily up and down the floor. It was a very solid floor. As far as he was concerned it might be regarded as an invincible floor. If he had a pick, perhaps—Pachuca’s eyes brightened, and a roguish look came into them. He had been thinking as he often did in English, being practically bi-lingual, and the word suggested something to him. Why not pick the lock? He felt eagerly in his pocket for his knife—left, alas, in the pocket of his leather coat in the machine. Still, there might be one somewhere about. In the desk, perhaps. The saints would help a good Spaniard, undoubtedly. Pachuca was not unduly religious, and he could not recall at the moment any saint renowned for picking locks, so he let it go at that and began to hunt. Some sort of tool might be found in the desk.
The desk yielded pencils, pens, erasers, and other harmless implements without number, but nothing even remotely resembling a knife. Pachuca slammed the drawers angrily and resumed his tramping. The night was getting on and he was apparently no nearer freedom than when the girl had left him. He cursed volubly and disgustedly.
“I suppose if I had the shoulders of that abominable Scott I could break the door!” he muttered. “On the other hand,” he mused, grimly, “if I had had his brains I would not be here. It was a foolish business—trying to confiscate American property. It rarely pays.” Pachuca, like the famous Mr. Pecksniff, believed in keeping up appearances even with one’s self. His attempt was confiscation distinctly and not robbery. “It was talking with the American girl that day on the train that put it into my head. She would talk about her brother and his mine. Juan Pachuca, when will you learn to let women alone? Every time a woman comes upon the scene something disagreeable happens—and usually to you.”
He paused by the window and surveyed it distastefully. “If I have to go out by that window, I will—but I do not like it. If I could bribe someone to put up a ladder! But they are all asleep—the lazy fools.”
He glanced at the shakedown which Mrs. Van Zandt had sent over by Miller, the idea of a rope ladder made of sheets having floated idly through his head. Alas, the shakedown consisted of a small hard mattress and a couple of blankets, army blankets at that. Anyone who can make a rope ladder of army blankets, with nothing more solid to fasten them to than a rickety old desk, must be cleverer than even Juan Pachuca considered himself.
With a sigh of surrender he returned to the window. It was the only way; broken bones or no broken bones, it must be attempted. If he were unlucky enough to meet with disaster, he must crawl as far as the car, and once in the car he defied anyone, white, brown or black to stop him. If only they had left him his gun!
Carefully Pachuca balanced himself once more on the window and swung himself out, still clinging to the sill. The drop looked easier than it had before; he felt almost cheerful about it. Give him five minutes alone in the moonlight and he would have his liberty, his car and his triumph over Gringo carelessness. At the same moment, there arose out of the stillness the loud and penetrating bark of an aroused dog.
Yellow, who slept anywhere, being a tramp dog by nature, had elected to pass the night outside Scott’s window, and the cabin in which Scott was sleeping was across the street and only a few feet away from the window from which Pachuca was trying to escape. Not content with barking, the interfering Yellow started on a gallop for the peculiar looking person hanging out of the window. Almost instantly, a light flashed in Scott’s room and a head was thrust out of the window.
With an exasperated groan Pachuca drew himself back again and waited. Scott’s head was withdrawn, and two seconds later, Scott, himself, clad in pajamas and a bathrobe, dashed out of the cabin and was met by another figure which seemed to spring from nowhere. Pachuca thought the second figure looked like Miller, the man who had brought his blankets, but he was not sure. By this time the dog had stopped barking and was following the two men. Pachuca stood in the window, waiting developments. Scott looked up with evident relief.
“You’re there, are you?” he said.