“Don’t believe it. You see, I’d just come home from Princeton and had no commercial training. Anyway, I’d rather work in the open, ranching, or something like that. If I had a little capital, I’d buy in. As I haven’t, I’m open for any kind of a job. But there, again, I’ve got no experience further than the fact that I can ride a horse. I’m afraid it’s pick and shovel.”
The abused and hackneyed psychological moment had arrived! The net was spread, the twigs limed, the cage door open! With great artfulness Bull proceeded to shoo the bird inside. He knew of a job—in fact, it was on the same hacienda where he worked himself! Of course it had the disadvantage of being located in Mexico, across the line where nothing was certain but death and “requisitions”! And there was always the chance of a scrap! He, Bull, wouldn’t advise any one to try it that had too strong a grip on this life, for there was no saying just when one might be launched into “Kingdom Come.” But for a man who liked action and would take a fighting chance—so forth and so on.
A disinterested listener would have thought these and kindred inducements were eminently fitted to scare the bird away. If so—Bull did not want him. But, sizing him for a lad of spirit with the romantic outlook of his years, he counted on their appeal. Nor was he mistaken. He had finished telling of Carleton’s death at the hands of the Colorados, and was relating the accidental manner in which he and his compañeros had assumed the guardianship of Lee, when the young fellow thrust out his hand.
“Say, that’s fine, old man! I’d be proud to have you take me in. My name is Nevil—Gordon Nevil, at your service. When do we start?”
“Whenever the train goes, an’ that’s be guess an’ be God. It’s billed to pull out from Juarez this evening, but we’ll be lucky if it leaves before morning. But sometimes they do make a mistake an’ start almost on time. So we’ll go aboard to-night.”
“What about clothes?” The recruit glanced down with distaste and dismay at his fashionable tweeds. “I can’t punch cows in these.”
“Hardly,” Bull grinned. “You’d come out from your first bunch of pear chaparral naked as on the day you were born. Come on an’ we’ll see about an outfit.”
It was found without any trouble in a convenient Jew store, and Gordon changed into it there and then. In cord riding-breeches, a brown army shirt, shoes, and leather puttees, topped with a conical cowman’s hat, his length of limb, flat flanks, deep chest, appeared to even better advantage. Bull’s expression, looking him over, would have fitted a match-making mama surveying a pretty daughter arrayed for her début. His comment, “You’ll do,” would have surprised the recipient could he have divined all of its implications.
Thoroughly satisfied, Bull was producing the money to pay, when Gordon stopped him. “Here, you can’t do that!”
“But you’re broke.”