The express messenger was leaning from the side door in the act of swinging a parcel to the local agent at the Grossing, when Brevoort and Pete entered.  With his back toward them and absorbed in launching the package he did not see them as they angled quickly to the other door and dropped off into the night.  The train slowed almost to a stop, the grinding brakes eased, and it drew away, leaving Pete and Brevoort squatting behind a row of empty oil barrels along the track.

CHAPTER XXXII

EL PASO

As the tail-lights of the train disappeared, Pete and Brevoort rose and walked down the track several hundred yards.  Pete was certain that they had retraced too far, but Brevoort assured him that he knew about where to look for the saddle-bags.  “I noticed that we passed a pile of new ties, jest after you dropped ’em,” said the Texan.

Pete insisted that they had come too far until they almost walked into the ties.  They searched about in the darkness, feeling along the ground with their feet, until finally Brevoort stumbled over the saddle-bags at the bottom of the ditch along the right-of-way.  He picked them up.  Pete was still rummaging around as Brevoort straightened.  For an instant the Texan was tempted to keep up the pretense of searching and so drift farther from Pete, until under cover of darkness he could decamp with the money—­across the border and make a fresh start with it—­as he told himself, “something to start on.”

But suddenly, and most absurdly alien to his present mood, came the vivid recollection of Pete’s face when he had smelled those unforgettable eggs in the box-stall of the Ortez stables.  Why this should have changed Brevoort’s hasty inclination is explainable, perhaps, through that strange transition from the serious to the humorous; that quick relief from nervous tension that allows a man to readjust himself toward the universe.  Brevoort cursed softly to himself as he strode to Pete.  “Here they are.  Found them back there a piece.  Now we got to foot it acrost this end of the town and drift wide of the white-lights.  Down to the south end we kin get somethin’ to eat, and some new clothes.  Them Jew stores is open late.”

Following the river road they skirted the town until opposite the Mexican quarter, where, Brevoort explained, they would be comparatively safe, so long as they attended to their own business.

Pete was amazed by the lights and the clamor—­a stringed orchestra playing in this open front, and a hot-dog vender declaiming in this open front; a moving-picture entrance brilliantly illuminated, and a constant movement of folk up and down the streets in free-and-easy fashion, and he almost forgot the cumulative hazards of their companionship in experiencing his first plunge into city life.  Brevoort, who knew the town, made for a Mexican lodging-house, where they took a room above the noisy saloon, washed, and after downing a drink of vile whiskey, crossed the street to a dingy restaurant.  Later they purchased some inconspicuous “town-clothes” which they carried back to their room.