"Thought you was in the 'Sepulchre'!" says Pedersen.
"I was till I'd shot out the lights," says I; "them crazy idiots there were handing out lead at me."
"Where did you see them robbers?"
"In the back street. They wounded my boy Monte, so I had to send him home. Say, look at that!"
Ahead on the white road, plain in the moonlight, lay something black, so I swung down my arm in passing, and took a grab. "What d'ye make of this, eh, Pedersen?"
"A silk mask," says he. "Thanks, Chalkeye—you've got us on the right trail, anyways."
"But watch these tracks," say I; "look there—they're quitting the main road—swing out!"
Curly and Jim had struck straight south down the road, so I pointed the whole pursuit well off to the right, south-west for Naco, and made believe I saw another mask among the stones. If dangerous robbers were hard to see through the moonshine, that was no fault of mine. If the citizens wanted to go riding out by moonlight, I surely gave them heaps good exercise.
Meanwhile that Curly was herding Jim down towards the Mexican boundary; but both the lads were rattled, and their nerves had gone all to smash. Jim had dumb yearnings to go back and eat up citizens, Curly was trying to cry with one lip while he laughed with the other. Then Jim told Curly not to be a coward, and Curly laughed with the tears rolling down his face.
"I wisht I was daid," he howled, "I wisht I was daid. I done murdered Beef Jones, and there's his ole hawss a-waiting to take him home. He loved that hawss."