That reminds me of Rojas.  Oh, Dick, it was glorious!  You didn’t do anything to the Dandy Rebel!  Not at all!  You merely caressed him—­gently moved him to one side.  Dick, harken to these glad words:  Rojas is in the hospital.  I was interested to inquire.  He had a smashed finger, a dislocated collar bone, three broken ribs, and a fearful gash on his face.  He’ll be in the hospital for a month.  Dick, when I meet that pig-headed dad of yours I’m going to give him the surprise of his life.

Send me a line whenever any one comes in from F. R., and inclose Mercedes’s letter in yours.  Take care of her, Dick, and may the future hold in store for you some of the sweetness I know now!

Faithfully yours,
Thorne.

Dick reread the letter, then folded it and placed it under his pillow.

“Never cared for pretty girls, huh?” he soliloquized.  “George, I never saw any till I struck Southern Arizona!  Guess I’d better make up for lost time.”

While he was eating his supper, with appetite rapidly returning to normal, Ladd and Jim came in, bowing their tall heads to enter the door.  Their friendly advances were singularly welcome to Gale, but he was still backward.  He allowed himself to show that he was glad to see them, and he listened.  Jim Lash had heard from Belding the result of the mauling given to Rojas by Dick.  And Jim talked about what a grand thing that was.  Ladd had a good deal to say about Belding’s horses.  It took no keen judge of human nature to see that horses constituted Ladd’s ruling passion.

“I’ve had wimmen go back on me, but never no hoss!” declared Ladd, and manifestly that was a controlling truth with him.

“Shore it’s a cinch Beldin’ is agoin’ to lose some of them hosses,” he said.  “You can search me if I don’t think there’ll be more doin’ on the border here than along the Rio Grande.  We’re just the same as on Greaser soil.  Mebbe we don’t stand no such chance of bein’ shot up as we would across the line.  But who’s goin’ to give up his hosses without a fight?  Half the time when Beldin’s stock is out of the alfalfa it’s grazin’ over the line.  He thinks he’s careful about them hosses, but he ain’t.”

“Look a-here, Laddy; you cain’t believe all you hear,” replied Jim, seriously.  “I reckon we mightn’t have any trouble.”

“Back up, Jim.  Shore you’re standin’ on your bridle.  I ain’t goin’ much on reports.  Remember that American we met in Casita, the prospector who’d just gotten out of Sonora?  He had some story, he had.  Swore he’d killed seventeen Greasers breakin’ through the rebel line round the mine where he an’ other Americans were corralled.  The next day when I met him again, he was drunk, an’ then he told me he’d shot thirty Greasers.  The chances are he did kill some.  But reports are exaggerated.  There are miners fightin’ for life down in Sonora, you can gamble on that.  An’ the truth is bad enough.  Take Rojas’s harryin’ of the Senorita, for instance.  Can you beat that?  Shore, Jim, there’s more doin’ than the raidin’ of a few hosses.  An’ Forlorn River is goin’ to get hers!”