"Will you promise," she asked, after watching him in silence
for a time, "that you will tell no one where I go or whom I
see?"
"Cross my heart hope to die," he assured her.
"All right, Eddie, then I'll let you come with me, and you
can ride beside me, instead of behind."
Across the flat they rode, following the windings of the
river road, one mile, two, five, ten. Eddie had long since been
wondering what the purpose of so steady a pace could be.
This was no pleasure ride which took the boss's daughter--
"heifer," Eddie would have called her--ten miles up river at a
hard trot. Eddie was worried, too. They had passed the
danger line, and were well within the stamping ground of
Pesita and his retainers. Here each little adobe dwelling, and
they were scattered at intervals of a mile or more along the
river, contained a rabid partisan of Pesita, or it contained no
one--Pesita had seen to this latter condition personally.
At last the young lady drew rein before a squalid and
dilapidated hut. Eddie gasped. It was Jose's, and Jose was a
notorious scoundrel whom old age alone kept from the active
pursuit of the only calling he ever had known--brigandage.
Why should the boss's daughter come to Jose? Jose was hand
in glove with every cutthroat in Chihuahua, or at least within
a radius of two hundred miles of his abode.
Pages:
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440