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commode back to its accustomed place, and then the sound of her footsteps
descending the stair.
Presently there came to them the rattling of a motor without, followed by
the voices of men in the house. For an hour, half asphyxiated by the
closeness of the attic, they waited, and then again they heard the sound of
the running engine, diminishing as the machine drew away.
Shortly after, Mrs. Shorter's voice rose to them from below:
"You ken come down now," she said, "they've gone."
When they had descended she led them to the kitchen.
"I got a bite to eat ready for you while they was here," she explained.
"When you've done you ken hide in the barn 'til dark, an' after that I'll
have my ol' man take you 'cross to Dodson, that's a junction, an' you'd
aughter be able to git away easy enough from there. I told 'em you started
for Olathe--there's where they've gone with the two tramps.
"My, but I did have a time of it! I ain't much good at story-tellin' but I
reckon I told more stories this arternoon than I ever tole before in all my
life. I told 'em that they was two of you, an' that the biggest one hed red
hair, an' the little one was all pock-marked. Then they said you prob'ly
wasn't the man at all, an' my! how they did swear at them two tramps fer
gettin' 'em way out here on a wild-goose chase; but they're goin' to look
fer you jes' the same in Olathe, only they won't find you there," and she
laughed, a bit nervously though.
It was dusk when Mr. Shorter returned from Holliday, but after he had heard
his wife's story he said that he'd drive "them two byes" all the way to
Mexico, if there wasn't any better plan.
"Dodson's far enough," Bridge assured him, and late that night the grateful
farmer set them down at their destination.
An hour later they were speeding south on the Missouri Pacific.
Bridge lay back, luxuriously, on the red plush of the smoker seat.
"Some class to us, eh, bo?" asked Billy.
Bridge stretched.
The tide-hounds race far up the shore--the hunt is on! The breakers roar!
Her spars are tipped with gold, and o'er her deck the spray is flung,
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The buoys that frolic in the bay, they nod the way, they nod the way!
The hunt is up! I am the prey! The hunter's bow is strung!
CHAPTER VI
"BABY BANDITS"
IT WAS twenty-four hours before Detective Sergeant Flannagan awoke to the
fact that something had been put over on him, and that a Kansas farmer's
wife had done the putting.
He managed to piece it out finally from the narratives of the two tramps,
and when he had returned to the Shorter home and listened to the
contradictory and whole-souled improvisations of Shorter pere and mere he
was convinced.
Whereupon he immediately telegraphed Chicago headquarters and obtained
the
necessary authority to proceed upon the trail of the fugitive, Byrne.
And so it was that Sergeant Flannagan landed in El Paso a few days later,
drawn thither by various pieces of intelligence he had gathered en route,
though with much delay and consequent vexation.
Even after he had quitted the train he was none too sure that he was upon
the right trail though he at once repaired to a telegraph office and wired
his chief that he was hot on the trail of the fugitive.
As a matter of fact he was much hotter than he imagined, for Billy and
Bridge were that very minute not two squares from him, debating as to the
future and the best manner of meeting it before it arrived.
"I think," said Billy, "that I'll duck across the border. I won't never be
safe in little old U. S., an' with things hoppin' in Mexico the way they
have been for the last few years I orter be able to lose myself pretty
well.
"Now you're all right, ol' top. You don't have to duck nothin' for you
ain't did nothin'. I don't know what you're runnin' away from; but I know
it ain't nothin' the police is worryin' about--I can tell that by the way
you act--so I guess we'll split here. You'd be a boob to cross if you don't
have to, fer if Villa don't get you the Carranzistas will, unless the
Zapatistas nab you first.
"Comin' or goin' some greasy-mugged highbinder's bound to croak you if you
cross, from what little I've heard since we landed in El Paso.
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"We'll feed up together tonight, fer the last time. Then I'll pull my
freight." He was silent for a while, and then: "I hate to do it, bo, fer
you're the whitest guy I ever struck," which was a great deal for Billy
Byrne of Grand Avenue to say.
Bridge finished rolling a brown paper cigarette before he spoke.
"Your words are pure and unadulterated wisdom, my friend," he said. "The
chances are scarcely even that two gringo hoboes would last the week out
afoot and broke in Viva Mexico; but it has been many years since I followed
the dictates of wisdom. Therefore I am going with you."
Billy grinned. He could not conceal his pleasure.
"You're past twenty-one," he said, "an' dry behind the ears. Let's go an'
eat. There is still some of that twenty-five left."
Together they entered a saloon which Bridge remembered as permitting a
very
large consumption of free lunch upon the purchase of a single schooner of
beer.
There were round tables scattered about the floor in front of the bar, and
after purchasing their beer they carried it to one of these that stood in a
far corner of the room close to a rear door.
Here Bridge sat on guard over the foaming open sesame to food while Billy
crossed to the free lunch counter and appropriated all that a zealous
attendant would permit him to carry off.
When he returned to the table he took a chair with his back to the wall in
conformity to a habit of long standing when, as now, it had stood him in
good stead to be in a position to see the other fellow at least as soon as
the other fellow saw him. The other fellow being more often than not a
large gentleman with a bit of shiny metal pinned to his left suspender
strap.
"That guy's a tight one," said Billy, jerking his hand in the direction of
the guardian of the free lunch. "I scoops up about a good, square meal for
a canary bird, an' he makes me cough up half of it. Wants to know if I
t'ink I can go into the restaurant business on a fi'-cent schooner of
suds."
Bridge laughed. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]