Part 27 (1/2)
”But did you see his other men at any time in the night?”
”No,” Tom admitted.
”Senor, you have made a grave mistake in arresting and holding the man, Gato. You had no right to do so.”
”Why, in our own country,” Tom protested, ”any one may arrest a man who is committing a crime. In our own case we very likely would have lost our lives to bandits if we had not tied Gato and brought him with us.”
”Had you tied him and left him behind it might have been different,”
explained the lieutenant. ”But what you did, Senor Reade, was to make an actual arrest, and this you, as an American, had no right to do. Therefore, I shall hold you until this matter has been further inquired into.”
It was a bad plight, and there seemed to be no simple way out of it. The young chief engineer began to see that, innocently, and wholly for the purpose of self-protection, he very likely had infringed upon the kinds of rights that foreigners in Mexico do not possess.
”All right, Lieutenant,” sighed Tom. ”I suppose we shall have to go along with you. Where are you taking us?”
”That will have to be decided,” said the officer. ”Nowhere for the presents my men are tired and need rest. We will not humiliate you, Senor Reade, by placing you in irons, but I will ask your word of honor that you won't attempt to escape from us.”
”I give you that word of honor,” said Tom, simply.
”And I have only to remind you, senor, that, if you make the mistake of breaking your word, bullets travel fast and several of my men are sharpshooters.”
”I am an American and a gentleman,” Reade returned, with offended dignity. ”My word of honor is not given to be broken.”
”Then you will seat yourself, senor, or stroll about and amuse yourself within the narrow limits of this small camp.”
Tom stepped over, rested his hand on Harry's shoulder, then dropped to a seat beside his chum.
”Can you beat it?” Tom demanded, in ready American slang.
”It would be hard to, wouldn't it?” Harry asked, smiling sheepishly.
Pedro Gato turned to regard them with a surly grin. Though handcuffed, Gato seemed to feel that he was now enjoying his own innings.
For an hour or more the soldiers continued to rest. All of them, including the lieutenant, who sat stiffly aloof from his men, rolling and smoking cigarettes.
”I see a bully argument against cigarette smoking,” whispered Tom in his chum's ear.
”What is it?” Harry wanted to know.
”All of these fellows are smoking cigarettes. I am proud of myself to feel that I don't belong in their cla.s.s.”
”A year ago Alf Drew would have felt at home in this cigarette-puffing, sallow-faced lot, wouldn't be?” grinned Harry.
”I am glad to say that Alf now knows how measly a cigarette smoker looks,” answered Tom.
Alf Drew, as readers of the preceding volume will remember, was a boy addicted to cigarettes, but whom Tom had broken of the stupid habit. Alf was now employed in the engineering offices of Reade & Hazelton.
”There's something coming,” announced Reade, presently. ”It sounds like a miniature railroad train.”
”I wish it were a real one, and that we had our baggage aboard,”
muttered Harry, with a grimace.