“It’s the exact truth, I assure you,” declared Jack smilingly, quite ignoring the mayor’s frown. He went on to tell the full details of the fight, or rather the argument, and when he had finished not one of the assembled crowd was there that did not join in the laugh.
“An’ how did you come to be hyar, young feller?” asked the mayor at the conclusion of Jack’s story. “You beant a greaser.”
“No, but I have found that there are a few brave and clever men on the other side of the line, too,” declared Jack.
“Ther kid’s right,” assented one or two in the crowd.
Jack then told as much of his adventures as he thought necessary, and at the conclusion the delighted mayor clapped him on the back so heartily that the breath was almost driven out of his body.
“I’ll give yer all ther liberty of Go ’long,” he said, sweeping his hand back toward his little principality.
But the two Mexican officers were obliged to refuse the mayor’s hospitality. A short time after the Federal troops had departed with their prisoners of war the two airmen winged their way southward to their headquarters.
As for Jack, he had ascertained that San Mercedes was only twenty miles or so off, so he determined to hire a horse and ride over there early in the morning. That night he slept in a bed for the first time in many long hours, and with his anxieties cleared away and his heart light, his slumbers were deep and dreamless. He was awakened by the ubiquitous mayor, who was also the hotel–keeper. Incidentally, the pretty school teacher turned out to be his daughter. Her enthusiastic praises of Jack the night before had made the boy blush hotly, but that was nothing to his embarrassment a few moments later when the town band, consisting of a cornet and a drum, headed a procession to the hotel and he had been compelled to give a speech.
Jack felt glad on waking that all that was over, and that in a short time he would be on his way back to his friends in the camp of the Rangers. The town of Go ’long did not offer much in the way of a menu beyond blackstrap and hot cakes, beans, bacon and black coffee, but Jack made a hearty meal on these frontier delicacies, after which he was informed that his pony was at the door.
His landlord, whose name, by the way, was Jerry Dolittle, refused to take a cent from the boy, and told him that when the Rangers came that way next his old friend, Captain Atkinson, could return him the pony.