"Hello, captain. Nice large warm evening. You out taking the air?" asked the cowpuncher.
"Did the rest get away?"
"Hope so. I had rotten luck. One of the guards plugged me in the leg, so I thought I'd kinder keep the Legion busy while our friends make their getaway."
"Can't you run?"
"Can't even walk." Yeager raised the revolver and fired. "Five. One left now."
His eye met that of the captain. Each of them understood perfectly.
"That first shot of yours just missed Pasquale. Pity you didn't shoot straighter."
"I had a dead beat on the old scamp, but I didn't want him. If Ruth gets away, that's all I ask. He's all kinds of a wolf, but Mexico needs him, I reckon."
"You're right about that, Steve. It wouldn't have done you any good to lay him out. Here they come."
A man ploughed through the brush toward them. Another appeared to the left. The face of a third peered around the trunk of an adjacent cottonwood. Of a sudden the grove seemed alive with them.