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Pete gestured as he described an imaginative incident relative to his supposed companion’s behavior the preceding night.  “Some folks been here askin’ for you.”  Pete shook his head as though he had been asked who the callers were.  He had turned sideways to the open window to carry on this pantomimic dialogue.  He glanced at the restaurant across the street.  The heavy-shouldered man had disappeared.  Pete heard a faint shuffling sound in the hall outside.  Before he could turn the door crashed inward.  He leapt to his feet.  With the leap his hand flashed to his side.  Unaccustomed to a coat, his thumb caught in the pocket just as the man who had shouldered the flimsy door down, reeled and sprawled on the floor.  Pete jerked his hand free, but in that lost instant a gun roared in the doorway.  He crumpled to the floor.  The heavy-shouldered man, followed by two officers, stepped into the room and glanced about.

“Thought there was two?  Where’s the other guy?” queried the policeman.

The man on the floor rose and picked up his gun.

“Well, we got one, anyhow.  Bill, ’phone the chief that one of ’em got away.  Have ’em send the wagon.  This kid here is done for, I guess.”

“He went for his gun,” said the heavy-shouldered man.  “It’s a dam’ good thing you went down with that door.  Gave me a chance to get him.”

“Here’s their stuff,” said an officer, kicking Pete’s pack that lay corded on the floor.

“Well, Tim,” said the man who had shouldered the door down, “you stay here till the wagon comes.  Bill and I will look around when he gets back.  Guess the other one made for the line.  Don’t know how he worked it.  Keep the crowd out.”

“Is he all in?” queried the officer.

“No; he’s breathin’ yet.  But he ain’t got long.  He’s a young bird to be a killer.”

Late that afternoon Pete was taken from the Emergency to the General Hospital.  Lights were just being turned on in the surgical ward and the newsboys were shouting an extra, headlining a border raid by the Mexicans and the shooting of a notorious bandit in El Paso.

The president of the Stockmen’s Security and Savings Bank bought a paper as he stepped into his car that evening and was driven toward home.  He read the account of the police raid, of the escape of one of the so-called outlaws, the finding of the murdered man near Sanborn, and a highly colored account of what was designated as the invasion of the United States territory by armed troops of Mexico.

Four thousand dollars in gold had been delivered to him personally that day by the express company—­a local delivery from a local source.  “Jim’s man,” he said to himself as the car passed through the Plaza and turned toward the eastern side of the town.  Upon reaching home the president told his chauffeur to wait.  Slitting an envelope he wrapped the paper and addressed it to James Ewell, Showdown, Arizona.