“He yelled, tossed up his arms, and made a half-turn toward the shore. Through a long instant I could see his finger-tips quiver against the green of a fern palm opposite. And then he was gone—snatched down from below as suddenly as the pantomime clown drops through the trap in the boards. A little foaming cone of water burst up from the whirl where he disappeared, and long, irregular stains floated away from its crimson centre. But never another sign of Rambo was seen again, either in the water or out of it. Joaquin was both his murderer and his grave!
“In justice to poor old Pedro I must allow that he was the man who took the thing most to heart. He screeched, he gesticulated, he called down curses upon the alligator from all the angels of paradise, and he made as if he would leap into the river and fall upon Joaquin with nothing more than a pocket-knife; in fact, it took all the exertions of the other niggers to keep him from it. They got him ashore at last pretty well demented and fighting like a maniac. He had to be tied to his bed before we durst leave him to himself. When the others had gone jabbering off home I shook my head solemnly at Concepcion.
“‘That means the end of Joaquin,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow I shall get orders from the boss to fill him up with Winchester bullets, and then where’s your ferry?’
“The Spaniard was as pale as milk. He looked away from me to his father foaming upon the bed, and then he gave a queer little high-pitched laugh.
“‘Señor Banks,’ he answered, ‘there may be two sides to that question. Señor Blique owns the mines, but not the river or the alligator. That dirt-begotten negro brought his fate upon himself.’
“I looked at him narrowly, and noticed that he was ostentatiously and abnormally calm. That’s a bad sign in a creole. They are safer red and roaring. Cold and white they’re malicious.
“‘My dear friend,’ said I politely, ‘there is no law against alligator shooting. Whatever orders I get I shall obey—be sure of that and take a friendly warning. Joaquin can’t stay hereabouts after that bloody exploit—it’s absurd to expect it.’
“He bowed quite pleasantly.
“‘If warnings are in order, señor,’ he replied, ‘take one from me. The man that kills Joaquin will not live long to boast of it!’ And at that he drew back the curtain from before the door and gave me a very significant view of the street. I took the hint and, without another word, marched out. And I did it sideways, too. You don’t expose the broad of your back to a man of Concepcion’s singular talents without making sure that he’s leaving his knife in his belt.
“Of course, as I predicted, old Emil was not prepared to stand any nonsense from Pedro Garsia, his son, or Joaquin. Rambo was one of his best foremen. He gave me the strictest orders to take my gun to the alligator the first thing in the morning and to revenge the mulatto if it took all day. I nodded, shrugged my shoulders, and went to bed.