Pete followed, groping his way into The Spider's room. He started back as a match flared. The Spider lighted a lamp. In the sudden soft glow Pete beheld a veritable storehouse of plunder: gorgeous serapes from Old Mexico—blankets from Tehuantepec and Oaxaca, rebosas of woven silk and linen and wool, the cruder colorings of the Navajo and Hopi saddle-blankets, war-bags and buckskin garments heavy with the beadwork of the Utes and Blackfeet, a buffalo-hide shield, an Apache bow and quiver of arrows, skins of the mountain lion and lynx, and hanging from the beam-end a silver-mounted saddle and bridle and above it a Mexican sombrero heavy with golden filigree.
"You've rambled some," commented Pete.
"Some. What's the matter with your head?"
"Your friend Flores handed me one—from behind," said Pete.
The Spider gestured toward a blanket-covered couch against the wall. "Lay down there. No, on your face. Huh! Wait till I get some water."
Pete closed his eyes. Presently he felt the light touch of fingers and then a soothing coolness. He heard The Spider moving about the room. The door closed softly. Pete raised his head. The room was dark. He thought of Malvey and he wondered at The Spider's apparent solicitude. He was in The Spider's hands—for good or ill… Sleep blotted out all sense of being.
Late that afternoon he awoke to realize that there was some one in the room. He raised on his elbow and turned to see The Spider gazing down at him with a peculiar expression—as though he were questioning himself and awaiting an answer from some outside source.
Pete stretched and yawned and grinned lazily. "Hello, pardner! I was dreamin' of a friend of mine when I come to and saw"—Pete hesitated, sat up and yawned again—"another friend that I wa'n't dreamin' about," he concluded.
"What makes you think I'm your friend?" queried The Spider.
"Oh, hell, I dunno," said Pete, rubbing the back of his head and grinning boyishly. "But there's no law ag'in' my feelin' that way, is there? Doggone it, I'm plumb empty! Feel like my insides had been takin' a day off and had come back just pawin' the air to git to work."