“Just wait, Dad,” begged his son, Cliff, “he’s coming to it, now.”
Mr. Gray leaned back and studied the bleared eyes while Henry Morgan resumed his story and the chums almost held their breath.
“I had to tell all that. ’Cause why? ’Cause it counts in the finish—or will, if you see it the way I do,” declared the rover. “I won’t waste time sayin’ how I got back, what I went through. But get back to Dead Hope I did.
“And it was on the night of the bandits’ raid!”
Then Mr. Gray saw why the boys were so absorbed. They knew what was coming.
“That dark night I come a-stumblin’ up the path, yonder, weak and hungry and staggerin’—I hadn’t eat no food for a day. All of a sudden there was a yelling and a shouting and guns a-popping!”
“What did you do?” gasped Nicky, thrilled anew by the recital.
“I stopped,” said Henry, matter-of-factly, “I stopped. There was flashes of guns and people running around and the men on horses shooting and riding after people in their night-clothes—the ones that was on the ground, I mean, not the bandits. They was dressed, of course! One o’ the men a-horseback rode right close to where I had dropped back behind the rock, and he saw me. ‘Here, grab this rein,’ he snapped at me—and you can believe it or not—it was B—it was my old pal I had last seen in Mexico City, drunk, and he had give me this slash with a broken bottle!”
“B—who’s Be—?” asked Tom quickly, trying a clever way to surprise the man into revealing the name they sought, without having to wait.
“Be—oh, he’s the man I’ve been talkin’ of,” said Henry, favoring Tom with a steady stare and then, suddenly, breaking into his high chuckle. Then he sobered down and went on.