CHAPTER XXIV
THE SITUATION BECOMES DIFFICULT
They had halted beside a dense patch of chaparral. Carlitos had scarcely thrown his verbal bomb when Tom Hotchkiss slid out of his seat and dived into the thicket beside the narrow road like a wood-chuck into its hole. No fat man ever disappeared more quickly.
Janice and Marty were too disturbed by the announcement of the automobile driver, and too startled withal, to note Hotchkiss' departure. The bandits, headed by Dario Gomez, swung into the trail and charged immediately down upon the stalled automobile.
The band consisted of nearly forty—an unusually large and important commando, as the Mexican banditti rove the country mostly in small parties, preying on whomever may have anything worth taking, and keeping up a desultory warfare against the troops of whatever de facto government may at the time be in power in Mexico City.
"Hi tunket!" exploded Marty. "What are we going to do now?"
Carlitos shrugged his shoulders, sat down, and began to roll the ever present cigarette. "As the young señor says, ''I tunkeet!'" quoted the Mexican. "What can we do but submeet?"
"Submit to what, Carlitos?" whispered Janice. "What is the danger from these men?"
"Quién sabe?" drawled the driver of the car. "We are in the hands of God, señorita."
The leader of the fierce-looking band was a man with long, waving mustachios, a regular piratical-looking hirsute adornment. He carried a white, ugly scar across his right cheek—evidently the memento of a more or less recent saber wound. He spoke first of all in Spanish to Carlitos while his wildly riding followers—plainly vaqueros all—dragged their mounts back to a dramatic halt about the stalled car, surrounding the party with a cloud of dust.
Carlitos drawled a reply and gestured toward his remaining passengers. Dario Gomez exclaimed: