"I'm tired wearing this halo," observed Rhodes, referring to the white handkerchief around his head. "Also some of the dope you gave me seems to be evaporating from my system, and I feel like hitting the Piman breeze. Can we strike trail tomorrow?"
"We cannot. Doña Luz has been dosing out the dope for you--Mexican women are natural doctors with their own sort of herbs--and she says three days before you go in the sun. I've a notion she sort of let the Mexicans think that you were likely to cash in, and you bled so like a stuck pig that it was easy enough to believe the worst."
"Perhaps that's why Conrad felt safe in leaving me outside of jail. With Doña Luz as doctor, and a non-professional like you as assistant, I reckon he thought my chance of surviving that monkey wrench assault was slim, mighty slim!"
"Y--yes," agreed Pike, "under ordinary conditions he might have been justified in such surmise, but that would be figuring on the normal thickness of the normal civilized skull, but yours--why, Bub, all I'm puzzling over now is how it happens that the monkey wrench was only twisted a mite, not broke at all!"
"You scandalous old varmint!" grinned Kit. "Go on with your weak-minded amusements, taking advantage of a poor lone cripple,--refused by the army, and a victim of the latest German atrocity! I suppose--I suppose,"--he continued darkly, "everyone on and around Granados agrees that I was the villain in the assault?"
"I couldn't say as to that," returned Pike judicially. "Doña Luz would dose you, and plaster you, just the same if you had killed a half dozen instead of knocking the wind out of one. She's pretty fine and all woman, but naturally since they regard you as my _companero_ they are shy about expressing themselves when I'm around--all except Singleton--and you heard him."
"Good and plenty," agreed Kit. "Say, I'm going to catch up on sleep while I've a chance, and you rustle along and get any tag ends of things needed for the trail. I'm going to strike for Mesa Blanca, as that will take us up into the country of that Alisal mine. If we go broke there is Mesa Blanca ranch work to fall back on for a grub stake, but from what I hear we can dry wash enough to buy corn and flour, and the hills are full of burro meat. We'll browse around until we either strike it rich, or get fed up with trying. Anyway, _Companero_, we will be in a quiet, peaceful pastoral land, close to nature, and out of reach of Teuton guile and monkey wrenches. _Buenas noches_, señor. I'm asleep!"