"This is his
room. He has cut a hole in my floor which I shall have to pay
to have repaired."
A captain came next, sleepy-eyed and profane. When he
heard what had happened and that the wealth which he had
been detailed to guard had been taken while he slept, he tore
his hair and promised that the sentry should be shot at dawn.
By the time they had returned to the street all the male
population of Cuivaca was there and most of the female.
"One-thousand dollars," cried the bank president, "to the
man who stops the thief and returns to me what the villain
has stolen."
A detachment of soldiers was in the saddle and passing the
bank as the offer was made.
"Which way did he go?" asked the captain. "Did no one
see him leave?"
Bridge was upon the point of saying that he had seen him
and that he had ridden north, when it occurred to him that a
thousand dollars--even a thousand dollars Mex--was a great
deal of money, and that it would carry both himself and Billy
to Rio and leave something for pleasure beside.
Then up spoke a tall, thin man with the skin of a coffee
bean.
"I saw him, Senor Capitan," he cried. "He kept his horse in
my corral, and at night he came and took it out saying that
he was riding to visit a senorita.
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