The sun was up and we finally stopped in a wooded thicket on a sort of knoll that overlooked the country. The valley we had crossed stretched away to the west. The mountain seemed also to lie in that direction. The railroad track extended at the foot of the mountain below us, and from the point where we were hidden in the thicket, on the little shoulder or knoll, I could see clearly the way over which we had come and the point where we had emerged on the track.
Mooney had some food: dried meat and hard biscuit. We ate our breakfast, and he went to sleep, curling up in the leaves of the thicket as though nothing extraordinary had happened, and he was peacefully in a bed.
I could not go to sleep.
The incidents of the adventure in which I had become involved ran vaguely through my mind.
I am now certain that the explanation these men gave of their failure to find anything of value in the two preceding holdups was false; but it was clear that they were disappointed. They were on the lookout for some large shipment of money which they expected to obtain. I do not know whether they had any definite information about such a probable shipment or whether they were merely trying chances for it.
The story of the Mexican government money was, of course, merely a pretense.
Looking at the thing now, it seems to me that I was not very much impressed with that feature of the affair. It was a series of adventures directed against my enemy, the railroad, somewhat as the fairy adventures of the storybooks were directed against a dragon.
Mooney had given me a hundred dollars, not as part of the loot—for they continued to insist that they had not found what they were looking for—but as an honorarium out of his own pocket.
This was a large sum of money to me.
I do not remember precisely to what use I put the money except in one shining instance. I bought a bracelet for the girl who rode the white horse in the circus. It was a gold chain fastened with a lock.