“No, captain.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“A d—­d cowardly nigger from the Summit.”

“I agree with you for once; but he hasn’t had a very brilliant example.  Where’s he gone now?”

“To h-ll, for all I care!”

“Then I want you to go with him.  Listen.  If there’s a way out of the place, you know it or can find it.  I give you two days to do it—­you and he.  At the end of that time the order will be to shoot you on sight.  Now take off your boots.”

The man’s dark face visibly whitened, his teeth chattered in superstitious terror.

“I’m not going to shoot you now,” said Lee, smiling, “so you will have a chance to die with your boots on,* if you are superstitious.  I only want you to exchange them for that pair of Hale’s in the corner.  The fact is I have taken a fancy to yours.  That fashion of wearing the stockings outside strikes me as one of the neatest things out.”

     * “To die with one’s boots on.”  A synonym for death by
     violence, popular among Southwestern desperadoes, and the
     subject of superstitious dread.

Manuel suddenly drew off his boots with their muffled covering, and put on the ones designated.

“Now open the door.”

He did so.  Falkner was already waiting at the threshold, “Turn Manuel loose with the other, Ned, but disarm him first.  They might quarrel.  The habit of carrying arms, Manuel,” added Lee, as Falkner took a pistol and bowie-knife from the half-breed, “is of itself provocative of violence, and inconsistent with a bucolic and pastoral life.”

When Falkner returned he said hurriedly to his companion, “Do you think it wise, George, to let those hell-hounds loose?  Good God!  I could scarcely let my grip of his throat go, when I thought of what they were hunting.”

“My dear Ned,” said Lee, luxuriously ensconcing himself under the bedclothes again with a slight shiver of delicious warmth, “I must warn you against allowing the natural pride of a higher walk to prejudice you against the general level of our profession.  Indeed, I was quite struck with the justice of Manuel’s protest that I was interfering with certain rude processes of his own towards results aimed at by others.”

“George!” interrupted Falkner, almost savagely.

“Well.  I admit it’s getting rather late in the evening for pure philosophical inquiry, and you are tired.  Practically, then, it was wise to let them get away before they discovered two things.  One, our exact relations here with these women; and the other, how many of us were here.  At present they think we are three or four in possession and with the consent of the women.”

“The dogs!”

“They are paying us the highest compliment they can conceive of by supposing us cleverer scoundrels than themselves.  You are very unjust, Ned.”

“If they escape and tell their story?”