A partition divided the car into kitchen and living-quarters. Bunks rose in a tier of four at the end of the latter. Four more could be slept on long lockers at each side of the table which was being set for supper by the Chinese cook. From the oldest to the youngest, the correspondents were on edge for the approaching battle. At supper their talk ran on its possibilities.
“If Valles is beaten again,” Weekes, the gray-haired dean, summed the conversation, “our government will throw another of its silly flip-flops and turn him down. And then—”
“—this corresponding job won’t make good insurance.”
“And then—” the dean began again.
“We’ll hit for El Paso before Santos-Coy grabs us again.”
“And then”—the dean triumphed over interruptions—“God pity the poor gringos in northern Mexico.”
Bull’s friend nodded. “Valles’s army will scatter into bands that will rake the country with fine-tooth combs for the least bit of plunder. You had better get your girl and her fellow, Diogenes, and come out with us.”
Later, when they had all climbed up on the roof and sat watching the oil-smoke from the laboring locomotive whirl and twist, then float away and lay its great sable plumes against the rich reds and golds of the evening sky, they gave expert opinion on Benson’s mission.
“If Valles wins, so do you,” the dean opined. “He needs horses worse than money, and, as you say, has slathers of it in the El Paso banks. But if he loses—hit for the border at once. I saw him the other day after the first defeat, and hell couldn’t produce his equal. He was crazy; a maniac; a tiger gone stark, staring, frothing mad.
“And lose he will. How do I know?” He answered a challenge. “It’s a mere problem of mathematics, the first equation of which was worked out in the battle the other day. Given two men of equal military ability, the one with a trained mind is bound to win. The other fellow, as you know, is a college man—a college man against a bandit.” He turned to Bull and Benson. “It’s a cinch that he’ll win. If I were you, gentlemen, I’d wait the event.”