"There stood the Black Pearl alone."
"Is that so?" sneered the sheriff. "Well, you soon will be. You step aside from that curtain, and, Bob Flick, my men have orders to wing you and Gallito both the minute you even start to throw your hands back."
Gallito shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands and Flick laughingly waved his in the air.
"I guess you're right there, Bill," he said. "You sure got the argument of numbers. But say, boys, honest, what bug you all got in your heads? You see in this land of the free you can't subject me and my friend Gallito to such indignities as you're a heaping on us. As far as I can make out, you're only laying up trouble for yourself, and also"—here there rang a peculiarly menacing note through his soft, southern voice—"if I'm correct, you're accusing Miss Pearl Gallito of being a suspicious character, and I'm assuring you now, boys, that either in the desert or here in the mountains that that's the sort of thing you've got to answer for."
"Stop your kidding, Bob," said the sheriff, impatiently. He took a rapid stride forward and with one quick sweep of the arm ripped back the curtain.
Then he fell back staring, dumb with surprise. For there stood the Black Pearl alone, a man's coat buttoned across her bare chest, and beneath it the froth of her rose-colored silk petticoats. She stood nonchalantly enough, her head thrown back, her hands on her hips, surveying the group of men with a quick, disdainful smile, and then laughed insolently across them at Hanson.
"My Lord!" cried the sheriff, recovering himself, "how did you get here? Why, you just went out of the door."
"Gee! José dressed up in her clothes and made a getaway," called a shrill voice from the rear.