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Something impelled him to sit up in bed, and as he did so he could see
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through the window beside him into the yard at the rear of the building.
There in the moonlight he saw a man throwing a sack across the horn of a
saddle. He saw the man mount, and he saw him wheel his horse around about
and ride away toward the north. There seemed to Bridge nothing unusual
about the man's act, nor had there been any indication either of stealth or
haste to arouse the American's suspicions. Bridge lay back again upon his
pillows and sought to woo the slumber which the sudden awakening seemed
to
have banished for the remainder of the night.
And up the stairway to the second floor staggered Tony and Benito. Their
money was gone; but they had acquired something else which appeared much
more difficult to carry and not so easily gotten rid of.
Tony held the key to their room. It was the second room upon the right of
the hall. Tony remembered that very distinctly. He had impressed it upon
his mind before leaving the room earlier in the evening, for Tony had
feared some such contingency as that which had befallen.
Tony fumbled with the handle of a door, and stabbed vainly at an elusive
keyhole.
"Wait," mumbled Benito. "This is not the room. It was the second door from
the stairway. This is the third."
Tony lurched about and staggered back. Tony reasoned: "If that was the
third door the next behind me must be the second, and on the right;" but
Tony took not into consideration that he had reversed the direction of his
erratic wobbling. He lunged across the hall--not because he wished to but
because the spirits moved him. He came in contact with a door. "This, then,
must be the second door," he soliloquized, "and it is upon my right. Ah,
Benito, this is the room!"
Benito was skeptical. He said as much; but Tony was obdurate. Did he not
know a second door when he saw one? Was he, furthermore, not a grown
man
and therefore entirely capable of distinguishing between his left hand and
his right? Yes! Tony was all of that, and more, so Tony inserted the key in
the lock--it would have turned any lock upon the second floor--and, lo! the
door swung inward upon its hinges.
"Ah! Benito," cried Tony. "Did I not tell you so? See! This is our room,
for the key opens the door."
The room was dark. Tony, carried forward by the weight of his head, which
had long since grown unaccountably heavy, rushed his feet rapidly forward
that he might keep them within a few inches of his center of equilibrium.
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The distance which it took his feet to catch up with his head was equal to
the distance between the doorway and the foot of the bed, and when Tony
reached that spot, with Benito meandering after him, the latter, much to
his astonishment, saw in the diffused moonlight which pervaded the room,
the miraculous disappearance of his former enemy and erstwhile friend.
Then
from the depths below came a wild scream and a heavy thud.
The sentry upon the beat before the bank heard both. For an instant he
stood motionless, then he called aloud for the guard, and turned toward the
bank door. But this was locked and he could but peer in through the
windows. Seeing a dark form within, and being a Mexican he raised his rifle
and fired through the glass of the doors.
Tony, who had dropped through the hole which Billy had used so quietly,
heard the zing of a bullet pass his head, and the impact as it sploshed
into the adobe wall behind him. With a second yell Tony dodged behind the
safe and besought Mary to protect him.
From above Benito peered through the hole into the blackness below. Down
the hall came the barefoot landlord, awakened by the screams and the shot.
Behind him came Bridge, buckling his revolver belt about his hips as he
ran. Not having been furnished with pajamas Bridge had not thought it
necessary to remove his clothing, and so he had lost no time in dressing.
When the two, now joined by Benito, reached the street they found the guard
there, battering in the bank doors. Benito, fearing for the life of Tony,
which if anyone took should be taken by him, rushed upon the sergeant of
the guard, explaining with both lips and hands the remarkable accident
which had precipitated Tony into the bank.
The sergeant listened, though he did not believe, and when the doors had
fallen in, he commanded Tony to come out with his hands above his head.
Then followed an investigation which disclosed the looting of the safe, and
the great hole in the ceiling through which Tony had tumbled.
The bank president came while the sergeant and the landlord were in Billy's
room investigating. Bridge had followed them.
"It was the gringo," cried the excited Boniface. "This is his room. He has
cut a hole in my floor which I shall have to pay to have repaired."
A captain came next, sleepy-eyed and profane. When he heard what had
happened and that the wealth which he had been detailed to guard had been
taken while he slept, he tore his hair and promised that the sentry should
be shot at dawn.
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By the time they had returned to the street all the male population of
Cuivaca was there and most of the female.
"One-thousand dollars," cried the bank president, "to the man who stops the
thief and returns to me what the villain has stolen."
A detachment of soldiers was in the saddle and passing the bank as the
offer was made.
"Which way did he go?" asked the captain. "Did no one see him leave?"
Bridge was upon the point of saying that he had seen him and that he had
ridden north, when it occurred to him that a thousand dollars--even a
thousand dollars Mex--was a great deal of money, and that it would carry
both himself and Billy to Rio and leave something for pleasure beside.
Then up spoke a tall, thin man with the skin of a coffee bean.
"I saw him, Senor Capitan," he cried. "He kept his horse in my corral, and
at night he came and took it out saying that he was riding to visit a
senorita. He fooled me, the scoundrel; but I will tell you--he rode south.
I saw him ride south with my own eyes."
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