“No, no, he was trying to bribe me to let him go.”

“Let him go? Well, if he ain’t got a nerve! What’d he offer you—a castle in Spain?”

“No,” replied the girl, “a buried treasure in New Mexico.”

“What? Well, say, he must have thought you was green to fall for that stuff. A bright, wide-awake girl like you, too. Was it under an elm tree fifty paces off by moonlight?”

“Why? Couldn’t there be a buried treasure in New Mexico?”

“Well, I suppose there could if there’s been a fool to bury it; but it seems to me I’d of tried something snappier if I’d been him. An oil well, or shares in a gold mine, or somethin’ first class in the bunk line.”


CHAPTER IX

AT LIBERTY