“He is generous, this Gringo,” quoth Vicente. “He leaves more than he says. May there not be still more?”
And, from the debris of rotten wood, much of it crumbled to powder under their blows, they recovered five more coins, in the doing of which they lost ten more minutes that drove Torres and Jefe to the verge of madness.
“He does not stop to count, the wealthy Gringo,” said Rafael. “He must merely open that sack and pour it out. And that is the sack with which he rode to the beach of San Antonio when he blew up with dynamite the wall of our jail.”
The chase was resumed, and all went well for half an hour, when they came upon an abandoned freehold, already half-overrun with the returning jungle. A dilapidated, straw-thatched house, a fallen-in labor barracks, a broken-down corral the very posts of which had sprouted and leaved into growing trees, and a well showing recent use by virtue of a fresh length of riata attaching bucket to well-sweep, showed where some man had failed to tame the wild. And, conspicuously on the well-sweep, was pinned a familiar sheet of paper on which was written “300.”
“Mother of God!—a fortune!” cried Rafael.
“May the devil forever torture him in the last and deepest hell!” was Torres’ contribution.
“He pays better than your Senor Regan,” the Jefe sneered in his despair and disgust.
“His bag of silver is only so large,” Torres retorted. “It seems we must pick it all up before we catch him. But when we have picked it all up, and his bag is empty, then will we catch him.”
“We will go on now, comrades,” the Jefe addressed his posse ingratiatingly. “Afterwards, we will return at our leisure and recover the silver.”
Augustino broke his seal of silence again.