“So it appears,” disgustedly. “Am I a cat to scramble out of a window?”
“Well, Yellow was barking at something,” replied Scott, with a grin. “Might have been a plain, four-footed one, and it might have been a human puss. If you don’t mind, I reckon I’ll tie him to the front door down here. He’s rough on cats.”
“Suit yourself, amigo, I’m going to sleep,” was the disdainful reply.
Well, that ended going out by the window. Pachuca, having a Latin dislike for fresh air in the sleeping-room, closed the window angrily and threw himself down on the mattress. It was hard and there was no pillow. The blankets he would need to keep him warm. Pachuca, though used to hardships, dearly loved his comfort. He glanced around the room again; an old office coat hanging on a peg in a corner caught his eye. It would do for a pillow. He took it down and rolled it into a wad. As he did so, a clinking sound became audible. He reached into the pocket—a bunch of keys and an old hunting-knife came to light.
Pachuca grinned. Well, Heaven was looking out for its own; it was not in the nature of things that a Pachuca should be trampled in the dust by the proletariat! Patiently, one after another, he tried the keys—ah, the right one at last! He turned it and the door opened. Pachuca chuckled delightedly; it pleased his whimsicality to think that so apparently unsurmountable a difficulty should be solved in so plain and unromantic a fashion.
He returned to the window and saw Scott and Miller standing outside Scott’s cabin; saw Scott go inside and the cabin become dark once more and Miller go on down the street, stopping at the last house near the corral. Pachuca frowned. Was the fellow going in and going to bed like a Christian, or was he going to hang around and keep an eye on the car? This last would be extremely awkward. Miller, however, turned in at the house and disappeared.
Pachuca spent five minutes at the window watching, but he did not reappear. “Ah well, one must risk something!” he mused, and glanced down at the sleeping Yellow. Cautiously and with the soft step of one who has learned the wisdom of a silent tread, the young man slid down the stairway. The door at the foot of the stairs was open; it opened outward and they had tied the dog back of it.
Juan Pachuca opened the hunting-knife and surveyed it in a business-like fashion. There was a sudden movement of his arm and poor Yellow shivered and crumpled up noiselessly. Quietly, the knife still in his hand, Pachuca slipped behind the building and continued his way toward the corral. He reached the car unhindered and breathed a sigh of relief; the rest would be plain sailing. A peep into the tonneau showed him that the plunder had been removed; but that, of course, he had expected. He jumped into the car and started the engine. At the same moment, a burly figure rushed out of the house near by, caught at the car as it started, clung to the running-board and, leaning over, seized Pachuca by the arm.
It was Miller; Miller, who had indeed gone to bed, but whose bed was near the window of the little cabin, and who had been keeping one eye on the car and had emerged, scantily attired in a nightshirt tucked into a pair of trousers, to put a spoke in the Mexican’s wheel. Pachuca set his teeth! It was too much—to be so near liberty and then to lose it. A desperate look came into his eyes; he paid no attention to the angry demand of his assailant that he stop the car, but, making a sudden lunge, he drove the hunting-knife into the shoulder of the big man.
“Damn you, put up that knife!” choked Miller, seeing the blow coming but not quickly enough to dodge it. With one hand clutching the car and one holding Pachuca, he was too late to reach his gun. By the time he loosed his hold on the Mexican, the knife had reached its mark; a knife none too sharp, but driven by a practiced hand, it pierced the flesh, and with a groan, Miller dropped off the running-board into the road.