“That depends.” The correspondent answered, breezily, but with caution. “Without being what you could call wedded to this sandy, thirsty, cutthroat business of Mexican revolutions, I like it better than anything else in sight. But what’s your lay? Ranching?” He repeated it after Bull. “In central Chihuahua? Forget it, friend.”
Bull eyed him wistfully. He fitted so closely to specifications. Finally, in desperation, he opened his simple heart; was explaining his quest when the young fellow burst out laughing.
“I beg your pardon.” He raised a protesting hand against Bull’s black glower, then went on with sympathetic seriousness: “But you’ll have to admit that one doesn’t see a man of your build every day in this matrimonial business. So there’s a damsel in distress, hey? That alters the case. If it wasn’t for a little girl up in San Francisco that I expect to marry some day when I become very rich and famous, I’d try and help you out, for I know just how you feel. It would be a damned shame to have her throw herself away on a Mexican. But you’ve laid yourself out some job. Not that you won’t be able to find men, good-looking chaps at that. But to get the right one calls for some picking and choosing. But I tell you what I will do—I shall be up for a week and I’d love to give you a hand.”
“Sure you kedn’t tackle it yourself?”
The young fellow denied the wistful appeal. “Hombre! a million wouldn’t release my girl’s mortgage.”
With a regretful sigh Bull struck hands on the compact. While they were talking the train had ambled through the brown adobe skirts of Juarez, the squalid Mexican town across the Rio Grande, whence they were presently shot by automobile over the international bridge into the spacious bosom of El Paso’s largest hotel. Bull had calculated to go out, at once, on his search, but while they sat at breakfast there descended upon them a host of reporters and correspondents, ravenous for news and aching to dispense hospitality.
“Might as well put it off till to-morrow, Diogenes.” His friend had already named Bull after the person who had such a deuce of a time hunting an honest man among the grafters and ward heelers of ancient Greece. “We’ll devote to-day to the irrigation of our desiccated systems, then go to it mañana like hungry dogs. But safety first! Take a ten out of your wad and give the rest to the clerk.”
Instead of one day, however, three passed during which Bull’s huge bulk upreared alongside a hundred bars. In all that time he never went to bed, for, intensified by long abstinence, the outbreak proved unusually virulent. Generally the conclusion of his debauches found him broke. But, thanks to the correspondent’s prevision, he awoke on the fourth morning, in bed at the hotel, with the bulk of his money still in the office safe. While he was draining the water-jug according to time-honored precedents, his friend appeared in the doorway of the adjoining room. His own head was swathed in a wet towel that almost hid his rueful grin.
“One never knows what one is starting. You certainly went the limit, Diogenes. Are you quite sure you’re through?”
Bull nodded and put down the jug with a satisfied sigh. “It’s a bit of a strain, this fathering an’ mothering a lone girl, a feller’s gotter keep so straight.” He added, apologetically, “I was jest plumb ripe for a bust, but I reckon this orter hold me for another three months.”