Baldy laughed mockingly.
“Put four chairs against the wall and set down our guests,” he ordered. “Kohler, you and Baum set over here and keep yore guns on ’em, sabe? Guadalupe, you bring in the bride. By God, we’ll have a marriage, if I have to be the bridegroom myself.”
Baldy turned angrily to Doctor Meline.
“So yore money package was a dummy, eh? You didn’t trust us to send it back, didja, Meline? And all yore yelpin’ about losin’ twenty thousand dollars was only a lie! You sent that fool kid in to take it back to you.”
“What is that to you?” demanded Meline hotly.
“Nothin’, only yore crooked work has put us in danged bad. You ain’t got no more sense than to write letters that anybody might steal.”
“My crooked work?” Meline laughed. “You’ve got a lot of nerve to yelp about crooked work.”
“I never played crooked with my own kind,” retorted Baldy.
The boys began arranging the four chairs against the wall, while Guadalupe went to the kitchen, carrying the captured weapons, which he placed on the kitchen table. Felipe and Lopez had been guarding the women, but now Guadalupe signaled them to precede him into the other room.
Felipe and Lopez grinned at each other, as they drank from a jug.