"No, he missed me. He was right quick, but I had him lined against that openin' there before he said a word. If he'd 'a' stood back and kept still he could have plugged us when we rode past. He was too sure of his game."
"Who was it, Ed?"
"I got one guess. We got the money. And he got what was comin' to him." Brevoort swung down and struck a match. "I owed you that, Brent," he said as the match flared up and went out.
"Brent!" exclaimed Pete.
Brevoort mounted and they rode on past the sinister place, in the chill silence of reaction from the tense and sudden moment when death had spoken to them from the shadows where now was silence and that voiceless thing that had once been a man. "Got to kill to live!" Pete shivered as they swung from the shadows and rode out across the open, and on down the dim, meandering road that led toward the faint, greenish light glimmering above the desert station of Sanborn.
CHAPTER XXXI
FUGITIVE
Rodeo, Hachita, Monument—long hours between each town as the local did its variable thirty-five miles an hour across the southern end of New Mexico. It was Pete's first experience in traveling by rail, and true to himself he made the most of it. He used his eyes, and came to the conclusion that they were aboard a very fast train—a train that "would sure give a thoroughbred the run of its life"—Pete's standard of speed being altogether of the saddle—and that more people got on and off that train than could possibly have homes in that vast and uninhabited region. The conductor was an exceedingly popular individual. Every one called him by his "front name," which he acknowledged pleasantly in like manner. Pete wondered if the uniformed gentleman packed a gun; and was somewhat disappointed when he discovered that that protuberance beneath the conductor's brass-buttoned coat was nothing more deadly than a leather wallet, pretty well filled with bills and loose silver—for that isolated railroad did a good cash business and discriminating conductors grew unobtrusively wealthy. And what was still more strange to Pete was the fact that the conductor seemed to know where each person was going, without having to refer to any penciled notation or other evident data.
The conductor was surprisingly genial, even to strangers, for, having announced that the next station was El Paso, he took the end seat of the combination baggage and smoking car, spread out his report sheet, and as he sorted and arranged the canceled tickets, he chatted with Pete and Brevoort, who sat facing him. Had they heard the news? Brevoort shook his head. Well, there had been a big fight down along the line, between the northern cattlemen and Arguilla's soldiers. It was rumored that several American cowboys had been killed. He had heard this from the agent at Hermanas, who had "listened in" on the wire to El Paso. Perhaps they had heard about it, though, as they had come up from that way. No? Well, the El Paso papers already had the news, by wire. How was the cattle business going, anyway?