“Conrad, eh?” grunted Kit weakly, “you’re a nice easy mark for the frankfurter game,––you and your pacifist bunch of near-traitors! Why man–––”
But Singleton waved him away, and followed the men who were carrying Conrad to the bunk house.
“All right, all right! But take care you don’t meet with a nastier accident than that before you are done with this game!” he said shaking his fist warningly after Singleton, and then he staggered to his horse where Pike was waiting for him.
He got in the saddle, and reeled there a moment, conscious of hostile, watchful eyes,––and one girl’s face all alone in the blur.
“Say,” he said, “I heard you scream. You thought it was you I swore at. You’re wrong there. But you are some little prophetess,––you are! The job’s gone, and Herrara’s got away with the evidence, and the jig’s up! But it wasn’t you I cussed at––not––at––all! Come on, Pike. This new ventilator in my head is playing hell its own way. Come on––let’s go by-bye!”
CHAPTER IV
IN THE ADOBE OF PEDRO VIJIL
“There ain’t no such animal,” decided Kit Rhodes seated on the edge of the bed in Pedro Vigil’s adobe. His head was bandaged, his face a trifle pale and the odor of medicaments in the shadowy room of the one deep-barred window. “No, Captain, no man, free, white and twenty-one could be such a fool. Can’t Singleton see that if Conrad’s story was true he’d have the constable after me for assault with intent to kill? He’s that sort!”