Having eaten, Billy returned to his room. It was now dark
and the bank closed and unlighted showed that all had left
it. Only the sentry paced up and down the sidewalk in front.
Going at once to his room Billy withdrew his tools from
their hiding place beneath the mattress, and a moment later
was busily engaged in boring holes through the floor at the
foot of his bed. For an hour he worked, cautiously and
quietly, until he had a rough circle of holes enclosing a space
about two feet in diameter. Then he laid aside the brace and
bit, and took the keyhole saw, with which he patiently sawed
through the wood between contiguous holes, until, the circle
completed, he lifted out a section of the floor leaving an
aperture large enough to permit him to squeeze his body
through when the time arrived for him to pass into the bank
beneath.
While Billy had worked three men had ridden into Cuivaca.
They were Tony, Benito, and the new bookkeeper of El
Orobo Rancho. The Mexicans, after eating, repaired at once
to the joys of the cantina; while Bridge sought a room in the
building to which his escort directed him.
As chance would have it, it was the same building in which
Billy labored and the room lay upon the rear side of it
overlooking the same yard.
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