“I made it,” said Bill, as soon as Henderson was out of hearing. “I smoked a pipe with the chief, and he came over to my way of thinking. Jack, you will ride down to the house with us in the morning.”
“But look here, Bill,” said the man who had done most of the talking with me. “Don’t you think those boys would be some kin to the biggest kind of dunces if they went off to escape from the hostiles, an’ left their plunder buried where you could find it? That’s what’s been running in my head ever since you went out to see the chief.”
“No, I don’t think so,” replied Bill. “They went off in a hurry, did they not, and forgot to take some of their things with them. We have made thirty thousand dollars this trip, and that is something worth having.”
“Yes, an’ that dog-gone muel got away from us. I expect that lucky feller at the ranch will have him.”
“Well, we can’t help that. And if I don’t find the money this time, I have got something else in store for Bob. I’ll pounce on him every chance, and steal his cattle by piece-meal, until he is driven from the country. And I wish to goodness that he had never come into it.”
“Here, too! I don’t believe there was any half a million dollars wrapped up in his hide.”
“Oh, yes! there was. But we can’t touch it now. Those men have been to Austin and got the will probated----”
“They have been to Austin and got it proved, and the property is all in Bob’s name. What we would have done if we had captured Bob in the place of this Carlos, I don’t know. Henderson thinks he could have got Bob to sign the money over to him, but what good would it have done? They’d say right away that we had gained the signature by fraud, and then we would have a war on our hands, I bet you. As it is, we can keep on stealing cattle; we will have a few Rangers to whip, and that’s all it will amount to. I am going to bed.”
I do not know that I was in any condition to produce sleep, surrounded as I was by men who had talked with satisfaction of seeing me tortured at sunrise; but it is a fact that, as soon as Coyote Bill sought his blankets, I sank into an untroubled slumber, from which I was awakened by Bill’s shaking me and ordering me to catch up. I started up, only to find that somebody had thrown a blanket over me while I was asleep, and to see that the camp of Indians was gone, and that there was no one in sight except Coyote Bill, his man Gentleman Jack,--I did not know what else to call him,--and Henderson.