The Mexican officer flushed with anger at the suggestion of contempt in the careless voice. His generalship was discredited. He had been outwitted and made to yield without a blow. But to have it flung in his teeth with such a debonair insolence threw him into a fury.
“If you and I ever meet on equal terms, señor, God pity you,” he ground out between his set jaws.
Bucky bowed, answering the furious anger in the man’s face as much as his words. “I shall try to be careful not to offer myself a sheath for a knife some dark night,” he scoffed.
A whistle blew, and then again. The revolver of Bucky rang out almost on the same instant as those of O’Halloran. Under cover of the smoke they slipped out of the car just as Rodrigo leaped down from the cab of the engine. Slowly the train began to back down the incline in the same direction from which it had come. The orders given the engineer were to move back at a snail’s pace until he reached Concho again. There he was to remain for two hours. That Chaves would submit to this O’Halloran did not for a moment suspect.
But the track would be kept obstructed till six o’clock in the morning, and a sufficient guard would wait in the underbrush to see that the right of way was not cleared. In the meantime the wagons would be pushing toward Chihuahua as fast as they could be hurried, and the rest of the riders would guard them till they separated on the outskirts of the town and slipped quietly in. In order to forestall any telegraphic communication between Lieutenant Chaves and his superiors in the city, the wires had been cut. On the face of it, the guns seemed to be safe. Only one thing had O’Halloran forgotten. Eight miles across the hills from Concho ran the line of the Chihuahua Northern.
CHAPTER XI.
“STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE.”
The two young Spanish aristocrats rode in advance of the convoy on the return trip, while O’Halloran and Bucky brought up the rear. The roads were too rough to permit of rapid travel, but the teams were pushed as fast as it could safely be done in the dark. It was necessary to get into the city before daybreak, and also before word reached Megales of the coup his enemies had made. O’Halloran calculated that this could be done, but he did not want to run his margin of time too fine.
“When the governor finds we have recaptured the arms, will he not have all your leaders arrested today and thrown into the prison?” asked the ranger.
“He will—if he can lay hands on them. But he had better catch his hare before he cooks it. I’m thinking that none of us will be at home to-day when his men come with a polite invitation to go along with them.”
“Then he’ll spend all day strengthening his position. With this warning he will be a fool if he can’t make himself secure before night, when the army is on his side.”