Part 52 (2/2)

”Good!” exclaimed Barbara ”Now start at once,” and she dropped the silver coins into the old man's palm

It was dusk when Captain Billy Byrne was summoned to the tent of Pesita

There he found a weazened, old Indian squatting at the side of the outlaw

”Jose,” said Pesita, ”has word for you”

Billy Byrne turned questioningly toward the Indian

”I have been sent, Senor Capitan,” explained Jose, ”by the beautiful senorita of El Orobo Rancho to tell you that your friend, Senor Bridge, has been captured by General Villa, and is being held at Cuivaca, where he will doubtless be shot--if help does not reach hi questioningly at Byrne Since the gringo had returned from Cuivaca with the loot of the bank and turned the last penny of it over to hi just short of superhuman To have robbed the bank thus easily while Villa's soldiers paced back and forth before the doorway seemed little short of an indication of miraculous powers, while to have turned the loot over intact to his chief, not asking for so much as a peso of it, was absolutely incredible

Pesita could not understand this reatly and feared him, too Such a man orth a hundred of the ordinary run of humanity that enlisted beneath Pesita's banners Byrne had but to ask a favor to have it granted, and nohen he called upon Pesita to furnish hiand enthusiastically acceded to his demands

”I will come,” he exclaimed, ”and all my men shall ride with me We will take Cuivaca by storm We may even capture Villa himself”

”Wait a et excited I'et my pal outen' Cuivaca After that I don't care who you capture; but I'ie out first I ken do it with twenty-five men--if it ain't too late Then, if you want to, you can shoot up the town Lees with the rest of 'eree to anything, and so it ca a choice selection of soh the hills toward Cuivaca While a couple of miles in the rear followed Pesita with the balance of his band

Billy rode until the few rehts of Cuivaca shone but a short distance ahead and they could hear plainly the strains of a grating graphophone from beyond the open s of a dance hall, and the voices of the sentries as they called the hour

”Stay here,” said Billy to a sergeant at his side, ”until you hear a hoot owl cry three tiuardhouse, then charge the opposite end of the town, firing off your carbines like hell an' yellin' yer heads off Make all the racket you can, an' keep it up 'til you get 'em comin' in your direction, see? Then turn an' drop back slowly, eggin' 'eet lish and Granavenooish the sergeant gleaned enough of the intent of his commander to permit him to salute and ad given his instructions Billy Byrne rode off to the west, circled Cuivaca and cae

Here he dis, while he crept cautiously forward to reconnoiter

He knew that the force within the village had no reason to fear attack

Villa knehere the main bodies of his enemies lay, and that no force could approach Cuivaca without word of its coarrison many hours in advance of the foe That Pesita, or another of the several bandit chiefs in the neighborhood would dare descend upon a garrisoned town never for a moment entered the calculations of the rebel leader

For these reasons Billy argued that Cuivaca would be poorly guarded On the night he had spent there he had seen sentries before the bank, the guardhouse, and the barracks in addition to one who paced to and fro in front of the house in which the coarrison uarded

Nor were conditions different tonight Billy cauardhouse before he discovered a sentinel The fellow lolled upon his gun in front of the building--an adobe structure in the rear of the barracks The other three sides of the guardhouse appeared to be unwatched

Billy threw hi often The sentry seemed asleep He did not move Billy reached the shadow at the side of the structure and some fifty feet from the soldier without detection Then he rose to his feet directly beneath a barred

Within Bridge paced back and forth the length of the little building He could not sleep Toe did not wish to die

That very eneral had been exceedingly wroth--the sting of the theft of his funds still irritated hi as to his fate It had remained for a fellow-prisoner to do that This e, a fact which gave him an additional twenty-four hours of life, since, he asserted, General Villa wished to be elsewhere than in Cuivaca when an American was executed Thus he could disclaieneral was to depart in the e and the deserter would be led out and blindfolded before a stone wall--if there was such a thing, or a brick wall, or an adobe wall It e either The as but a trivial factor It o far to add romance to whoe and the deserter were concerned it an: ”Eventually! Why not noould have been equally as efficacious and far more appropriate

The room in which he was confined was stuffy with the odor of accuave means of ventilation He and the deserter were the only prisoners The latter slept as soundly as though themore momentous in his destiny than any of the days that had preceded it Bridge wasfate Instead he walked to the southto fill his lungs with the free air beyond his prison pen, and gaze sorrowfully at the star-lit sky which he should never again behold

In a low tone Bridge crooned a snatch of the poem that he and Billy liked best:

And you, my sweet Penelope, out there somewhere you wait for me, With buds of roses in your hair and kisses on your e's mental vision was concentrated upon the veranda of a white-walled ranchhouse to the east He shook his head angrily