Bud King’s band of desperadoes, outlaws and horse and cattle thieves were in camp at a secluded spot on the bank of the Frio.  Their depredations in the Rio Grande country, while no bolder than usual, had been advertised more extensively, and Captain Kinney’s company of rangers had been ordered down to look after them.  Consequently, Bud King, who was a wise general, instead of cutting out a hot trail for the upholders of the law, as his men wished to do, retired for the time to the prickly fastnesses of the Frio valley.

Though the move was a prudent one, and not incompatible with Bud’s well-known courage, it raised dissension among the members of the band.  In fact, while they thus lay ingloriously perdu in the brush, the question of Bud King’s fitness for the leadership was argued, with closed doors, as it were, by his followers.  Never before had Bud’s skill or efficiency been brought to criticism; but his glory was waning (and such is glory’s fate) in the light of a newer star.  The sentiment of the band was crystallizing into the opinion that Black Eagle could lead them with more lustre, profit, and distinction.

This Black Eagle—­sub-titled the “Terror of the Border”—­had been a member of the gang about three months.

One night while they were in camp on the San Miguel water-hole a solitary horseman on the regulation fiery steed dashed in among them.  The newcomer was of a portentous and devastating aspect.  A beak-like nose with a predatory curve projected above a mass of bristling, blue-black whiskers.  His eye was cavernous and fierce.  He was spurred, sombreroed, booted, garnished with revolvers, abundantly drunk, and very much unafraid.  Few people in the country drained by the Rio Bravo would have cared thus to invade alone the camp of Bud King.  But this fell bird swooped fearlessly upon them and demanded to be fed.

Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited.  Even if your enemy pass your way you must feed him before you shoot him.  You must empty your larder into him before you empty your lead.  So the stranger of undeclared intentions was set down to a mighty feast.

A talkative bird he was, full of most marvellous loud tales and exploits, and speaking a language at times obscure but never colourless.  He was a new sensation to Bud King’s men, who rarely encountered new types.  They hung, delighted, upon his vainglorious boasting, the spicy strangeness of his lingo, his contemptuous familiarity with life, the world, and remote places, and the extravagant frankness with which he conveyed his sentiments.

To their guest the band of outlaws seemed to be nothing more than a congregation of country bumpkins whom he was “stringing for grub” just as he would have told his stories at the back door of a farmhouse to wheedle a meal.  And, indeed, his ignorance was not without excuse, for the “bad man” of the Southwest does not run to extremes.  Those brigands might justly have been taken for a little party of peaceable rustics assembled for a fish-fry or pecan gathering.  Gentle of manner, slouching of gait, soft-voiced, unpicturesquely clothed; not one of them presented to the eye any witness of the desperate records they had earned.