You can jest spread out them Navajos there and go to
sleep right plump ag'in the door, an' there won't nobody hev
to relieve you all night."
"Sure," said Eddie, "leave it to me--I'll watch the slicker."
Satisfied that their prisoner was safe for the night the
Villistas and Grayson departed, after seeing him safely locked
in the back room.
At the mention by the foreman of his guard's names--
Eddie and Shorter--Billy had studied the face of the young
American cowpuncher, for the two names had aroused within
his memory a tantalizing suggestion that they should be very
familiar. Yet he could connect them in no way with anyone
he had known in the past and he was quite sure that he never
before had set eyes upon this man.
Sitting in the dark with nothing to occupy him Billy let his
mind dwell upon the identity of his jailer, until, as may have
happened to you, nothing in the whole world seemed equally
as important as the solution of the mystery. Even his impending
fate faded into nothingness by comparison with the momentous
question as to where he had heard the name Eddie
Shorter before.
As he sat puzzling his brain over the inconsequential matter
something stirred upon the floor close to his feet, and presently
he jerked back a booted foot that a rat had commenced to
gnaw upon.
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