For two days the glittering stranger within the camp was feasted.  Then, by common consent, he was invited to become a member of the band.  He consented, presenting for enrollment the prodigious name of “Captain Montressor.”  This name was immediately overruled by the band, and “Piggy” substituted as a compliment to the awful and insatiate appetite of its owner.

Thus did the Texas border receive the most spectacular brigand that ever rode its chaparral.

For the next three months Bud King conducted business as usual, escaping encounters with law officers and being content with reasonable profits.  The band ran off some very good companies of horses from the ranges, and a few bunches of fine cattle which they got safely across the Rio Grande and disposed of to fair advantage.  Often the band would ride into the little villages and Mexican settlements, terrorizing the inhabitants and plundering for the provisions and ammunition they needed.  It was during these bloodless raids that Piggy’s ferocious aspect and frightful voice gained him a renown more widespread and glorious than those other gentle-voiced and sad-faced desperadoes could have acquired in a lifetime.

The Mexicans, most apt in nomenclature, first called him The Black Eagle, and used to frighten the babes by threatening them with tales of the dreadful robber who carried off little children in his great beak.  Soon the name extended, and Black Eagle, the Terror of the Border, became a recognized factor in exaggerated newspaper reports and ranch gossip.

The country from the Nueces to the Rio Grande was a wild but fertile stretch, given over to the sheep and cattle ranches.  Range was free; the inhabitants were few; the law was mainly a letter, and the pirates met with little opposition until the flaunting and garish Piggy gave the band undue advertisement.  Then Kinney’s ranger company headed for those precincts, and Bud King knew that it meant grim and sudden war or else temporary retirement.  Regarding the risk to be unnecessary, he drew off his band to an almost inaccessible spot on the bank of the Frio.  Wherefore, as has been said, dissatisfaction arose among the members, and impeachment proceedings against Bud were premeditated, with Black Eagle in high favour for the succession.  Bud King was not unaware of the sentiment, and he called aside Cactus Taylor, his trusted lieutenant, to discuss it.

“If the boys,” said Bud, “ain’t satisfied with me, I’m willing to step out.  They’re buckin’ against my way of handlin’ ’em.  And ’specially because I concludes to hit the brush while Sam Kinney is ridin’ the line.  I saves ’em from bein’ shot or sent up on a state contract, and they up and says I’m no good.”

“It ain’t so much that,” explained Cactus, “as it is they’re plum locoed about Piggy.  They want them whiskers and that nose of his to split the wind at the head of the column.”