A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water’s edge.  His face was boyish, but with a premature severity that hinted at a man’s experience.  His complexion was naturally dark; and the sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a coffee brown.  His hair was as black and straight as an Indian’s; his face had not yet been upturned to the humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold and steady blue.  He carried his left arm somewhat away from his body, for pearl-handled .45s are frowned upon by town marshals, and are a little bulky when placed in the left armhole of one’s vest.  He looked beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the impersonal and expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor.

“Thinkin’ of buyin’ that’ar gulf, buddy?” asked the captain, made sarcastic by his narrow escape from a tobaccoless voyage.

“Why, no,” said the Kid gently, “I reckon not.  I never saw it before.  I was just looking at it.  Not thinking of selling it, are you?”

“Not this trip,” said the captain.  “I’ll send it to you C.O.D. when I get back to Buenas Tierras.  Here comes that capstanfooted lubber with the chewin’.  I ought to’ve weighed anchor an hour ago.”

“Is that your ship out there?” asked the Kid.

“Why, yes,” answered the captain, “if you want to call a schooner a ship, and I don’t mind lyin’.  But you better say Miller and Gonzales, owners, and ordinary plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel K. Boone, skipper.”

“Where are you going to?” asked the refugee.

“Buenas Tierras, coast of South America—­I forgot what they called the country the last time I was there.  Cargo—­lumber, corrugated iron, and machetes.”

“What kind of a country is it?” asked the Kid—­“hot or cold?”

“Warmish, buddy,” said the captain.  “But a regular Paradise Lost for elegance of scenery and be-yooty of geography.  Ye’re wakened every morning by the sweet singin’ of red birds with seven purple tails, and the sighin’ of breezes in the posies and roses.  And the inhabitants never work, for they can reach out and pick steamer baskets of the choicest hothouse fruit without gettin’ out of bed.  And there’s no Sunday and no ice and no rent and no troubles and no use and no nothin’.  It’s a great country for a man to go to sleep with, and wait for somethin’ to turn up.  The bananys and oranges and hurricanes and pineapples that ye eat comes from there.”

“That sounds to me!” said the Kid, at last betraying interest.  “What’ll the expressage be to take me out there with you?”

“Twenty-four dollars,” said Captain Boone; “grub and transportation.  Second cabin.  I haven’t got a first cabin.”

“You’ve got my company,” said the Kid, pulling out a buckskin bag.

With three hundred dollars he had gone to Laredo for his regular “blowout.”  The duel in Valdos’s had cut short his season of hilarity, but it had left him with nearly $200 for aid in the flight that it had made necessary.