“Wait a minute, bo,” interrupted Billy Byrne.  “Don’t get excited.  I’m lookin’ to get my pal outen’ Cuivaca.  After that I don’t care who you capture; but I’m goin’ to get Bridgie out first.  I ken do it with twenty-five men—­if it ain’t too late.  Then, if you want to, you can shoot up the town.  Lemme have the twenty-five, an’ you hang around the edges with the rest of ’em ’til I’m done.  Whaddaya say?”

Pesita was willing to agree to anything, and so it came that half an hour later Billy Byrne was leading a choice selection of some two dozen cutthroats down through the hills toward Cuivaca.  While a couple of miles in the rear followed Pesita with the balance of his band.

Billy rode until the few remaining lights of Cuivaca shone but a short distance ahead and they could hear plainly the strains of a grating graphophone from beyond the open windows of a dance hall, and the voices of the sentries as they called the hour.

“Stay here,” said Billy to a sergeant at his side, “until you hear a hoot owl cry three times from the direction of the barracks and guardhouse, then charge the opposite end of the town, firing off your carbines like hell an’ yellin’ yer heads off.  Make all the racket you can, an’ keep it up ’til you get ’em comin’ in your direction, see?  Then turn an’ drop back slowly, eggin’ ’em on, but holdin’ ’em to it as long as you can.  Do you get me, bo?”

From the mixture of Spanish and English and Granavenooish the sergeant gleaned enough of the intent of his commander to permit him to salute and admit that he understood what was required of him.

Having given his instructions Billy Byrne rode off to the west, circled Cuivaca and came close up upon the southern edge of the little village.  Here he dismounted and left his horse hidden behind an outbuilding, while he crept cautiously forward to reconnoiter.

He knew that the force within the village had no reason to fear attack.  Villa knew where the main bodies of his enemies lay, and that no force could approach Cuivaca without word of its coming reaching the garrison many hours in advance of the foe.  That Pesita, or another of the several bandit chiefs in the neighborhood would dare descend upon a garrisoned town never for a moment entered the calculations of the rebel leader.

For these reasons Billy argued that Cuivaca would be poorly guarded.  On the night he had spent there he had seen sentries before the bank, the guardhouse, and the barracks in addition to one who paced to and fro in front of the house in which the commander of the garrison maintained his headquarters.  Aside from these the town was unguarded.

Nor were conditions different tonight.  Billy came within a hundred yards of the guardhouse before he discovered a sentinel.  The fellow lolled upon his gun in front of the building—­an adobe structure in the rear of the barracks.  The other three sides of the guardhouse appeared to be unwatched.