I got the name—­and I might as well have the game.  It’s nobody’s funeral but mine, anyhow.”  He felt, mistakenly, that his friends had all gone back on him—­a condition of mind occasioned by his misfortunes rather than by any logical thought, for at that very moment Jim Bailey was searching high and low for Pete in order to tell him that Gary was not dead—­but had been taken to the railroad hospital at Enright, operated on, and now lay, minus the fragments of three or four ribs, as malevolent as ever, and slowly recovering from a wound that had at first been considered fatal.

Young Pete was not to know of this until long after the knowledge could have had any value in shaping his career.  Bailey, with two of his men, traced Pete as far as Showdown, where the trail went blind, ending with The Spider’s apparently sincere assertion that he knew nothing whatever of Peters whereabouts.

Paradoxically, those very qualities which won him friends now kept Pete from those friends.  The last place toward which he would have chosen to ride would have been the Concho—­and the last man he would have asked for help would have been Jim Bailey.  Pete felt that he was doing pretty well at creating trouble for himself without entangling his best friends.

“Got to kill to live,” he reiterated.

“Como ’sta, senor?” Old Flores had just stepped from behind the crumbling ’dobe wall of the stable.

“Well, it ain’t your fault I ain’t a-furnishin’ a argument for the coyotes.”

“The senor would insult Boca.  He was drunk,” said Flores.

“Hold on there!  Don’t you go cantelopin’ off with any little ole idea like that sewed up in your hat. Which senor was drunk?”

Flores shrugged his shoulders.  “Who may say?” he half-whined.

“Well, I can, for one,” asserted Pete. “You was drunk and Malvey was drunk, and the two of you dam’ near fixed me.  But that don’t count—­now.  Where’s my hoss?”

“Quien sabe?”

“You make me sick,” said Pete in English.  Flores caught the word “sick” and thought Pete was complaining of his physical condition.

“The senor is welcome to rest and get well.  What is done is done, and cannot be mended.  But when the senor would ride, I can find a horse—­a good horse and not a very great price.”

“I’m willin’ to pay,” said Pete, who thought that he had already pretty well paid for anything he might need.

“And a good saddle,” continued Flores.

“I’m usin’ my own rig,” stated Pete.

“It is the saddle, there, that I would sell to the senor.”  The old Mexican gestured toward Pete’s own saddle.

Pete was about to retort hastily when he reconsidered.  The only way to meet trickery was with trickery.  “All right,” he said indifferently.  “You’ll sure get all that is comin’ to you.”

CHAPTER XXII