“Hey, Leslie!  Get something to carry this stuff in,” O’Reilly directed over his shoulder.  Receiving only a muttered reply, he turned to find that his fellow-countryman had cut down a string of perhaps two dozen large straw sombreros and was attempting to select one that fitted his head.

“Oh, look!” Branch murmured.  “Forty dollars’ worth of lids, but—­ all too small.  They must have been made on the head of a cane.”

“Take the whole string, but get us something to wrap up this grub in.  Hurry!”

Spurred by O’Reilly’s tone and by a lively rattle of rifle-shots outside, Leslie disappeared into the living-quarters at the back of the store.  A moment later he emerged with a huge armful of bedclothes, evidently snatched at random.  Trailing behind him, like a bridal veil, was a mosquito-net, which in his haste he had torn from its fastenings.

“I guess this is poor!” he exulted.  “Bedding!  Pillows!  Mosquito-net!  I’ll sleep comfortable after this.”

From somewhere came the faint smothered wailing of a baby—­ eloquent testimony of the precipitate haste with which the terrified storekeeper and his wife had fled.  Dumping his burden of sheets, blankets, and brilliantly colored cotton quilts upon the floor, Branch selected two of the stoutest and began to knot the corners together.

He had scarcely finished when Judson reined in at the door and called to O’Reilly:  “We’ve cleaned out the drugstore.  Better get a move on you, for we may have to run any minute.  I’ve just heard about some Cuban prisoners in the calaboose.  Gimme a hand and we’ll let ’em out.”

“Sure!” O’Reilly quickly remounted, meanwhile directing Jacket to load the canned goods upon his horse and ride for the open country.  He looked back a few moments later, to see his asistente emerge from the bodega perched between two queer-looking improvised saddlebags bulging with plunder.  The pony was overloaded, but in obedience to the frantic urgings of its barelegged rider it managed to break into a shambling trot.  Branch reappeared, too, looping the eight-foot string of straw hats to his saddle-horn, and balancing before him the remainder of the bedding, done up in a gaudy quilt.

Sharing in the general consternation at the attack, the jail guards had disappeared, leaving Lopez’s men free to break into the prison.  When O’Reilly joined them the work was well under way.  The municipal building of San Antonio was a thick-walled structure with iron-barred windows and stout doors; but the latter soon gave way, and the attackers poured in.  Seizing whatever implements they could find, Judson and O’Reilly went from cell to cell, battering, prying, smashing, leaving their comrades to rescue the inmates.  This jail was a poor affair.  It could scarcely be dignified by the name of a prison; nevertheless, true prison conditions prevailed in it and it was evidently conducted in typically Spanish fashion.  The corridors were dark and odorous, the cells unspeakably foul; O’Reilly and Judson saw, heard, smelled enough to convince them that no matter how guilty the prisoners might be they had been amply punished for their crimes.