these Nacionales are not so bad," defended Phil, as they passed the State soldiers of Sonora on the street, "but they're just as friendly as the Yaquis."
"Sure," jeered Bud, "when they're sober! But you get a bunch of 'em drunk and ask 'em what they think of the Gringos! No, you got to show me – I've seen too much of 'em."
"You haven't seen as much of 'em as I have, yet," retorted De Lancey, quickly. "I've been all over the republic, except right here in Sonora, and I swear these Sonorans here look good to me. There's no use holding a grouch against them, Bud – they haven't done us any dirt."
"No, they never had no chance," grumbled Bud, gazing grimly to the south. "But wait till the hot weather comes and the revoltosos come out of their holes; wait till them Chihuahua greasers thaw out up in the Sierras and come down to get some fresh mounts. Well, I'll tell 'em one thing," he ended, reaching down to pat his horse, "they'll never get old Copper Bottom here – not unless they steal him at night. It's all right to be cheerful about this, Phil, and you keep right on being glad, but I got a low-down hunch that we're going to get in bad."
"Well, I've got just as good a hunch," came back De Lancey, "that we're going to make a killing."
"Yes, and speaking of killings," said Bud, "you don't want to overlook that."
He pointed at a group of dismantled adobe buildings standing out on the edge of the town and flanked by a segment of whitewashed wall all spattered and breached with bullet-holes.
"There's where these prize Mexicans of yourn pulled off the biggest killing in Sonora. I was over here yesterday with that old prospector and he told me that that wall is the bull-ring. After the first big fight they gathered up three hundred and fifty men, more or less, and throwed 'em in a trench along by the wall – then they blowed it over on 'em with a few sticks of dynamite and let 'em pass for buried. No crosses or nothing. Excuse me, if they ever break loose like that – we might get planted with the rest!"
"By Jove, old top!" exclaimed De Lancey, laughing teasingly, "you've certainly got the blues to-day. Here, take something out of this bottle and see if it won't help."
He brought out a quart bottle from his saddle-bags and Bud drank, and shuddered at the bite of it.
"All right," he said, as he passed it back, "and while we're talking, what's the matter with cutting it out on booze for this trip?"
"What are we going to drink, then?" cried De Lancey in feigned alarm. "Water?"
"Well, something like that," admitted Bud. "Come on – what do you say? We might get lit up and tell something."
"Now lookee here, Bud," clamored Phil, who had had a few drinks already, "you don't mean to insinuate, do you? Next thing I know you'll be asking me to cut it out on the hay – might talk in my sleep, you know, and give the whole snap away!"
"No, you're a good boy when you're asleep, Phil," responded Bud, "but when you get about half shot it's different. Come on, now – I'll quit if you will. That's fair, ain't it?"
"What? No little toots around town? No serenading the señoritas and giving the rurales the hotfoot? Well, what's the use of living, Bud, if you can't have a little fun? Drinking don't make any difference, as long as we stick together. What's the use of swearing off – going on record in advance? We may find some fellow that we can't work any other way – we may have to go on a drunk with him in order to get his goat. But will you stick? That's the point!"
Bud glanced at him and grunted, and for a long time he rode on in silence. Before them lay a rolling plain, dipping by broad gulches and dwindling ridges to the lower levels of Old Mexico, and on the sky-line, thin and blue, stood the knifelike edges of the Fortunas miles away.
With desert-trained eyes he noted the landmarks, San Juan mountain to the right, Old Niggerhead to the left, and the feather-edge of mountains far below; and as he looked he stored it away in his mind in case he should come back on the run some night.
It was not a foreboding, but the training of his kind, to note the lay of the ground, and he planned just where he would ride to keep under cover if he ever made a dash for the line. But all the time his pardner was talking of friendship and of the necessity of their sticking together.
"I'll tell you, Bud," he said at last, his voice trembling with sentiment, "whether we win or lose, I won't have a single regret as long as I know we've been true to one another. You may know Texas and Arizona, Bud, but I know Old Mexico, the land of mañana and broken promises. I know the country, Bud – and the climate – and the women!
"They play the devil with the best of us, Bud, these dark-eyed señoritas! That's what makes all the trouble down here between man and man, it's these women and their ways. They're not satisfied to win a man's heart – they want him to kill somebody to show that he really loves them. By Jove! they're a fickle lot, and nothing pleases 'em more than setting man against man, one pardner against another."
"We never had no trouble yet," observed Bud sententiously.
"No, but we're likely to," protested De Lancey. "Those Indian women up in the Sierras wouldn't turn anybody's head, but we're going down into the hot country now, where the girls are pretty, ta-ra, ta-ra, and we talk through the windows at midnight."
"Well, if you'll cut out the booze," said Hooker shortly, "you can have 'em all, for all of me."
"Sure, that's what you say, but wait till you see them! Oh, la, la, la!" – he kissed his fingers ecstatically – "I'll be glad to see 'em myself! But listen, Bud, here's the proposition: Let's take an oath right now, while we're starting out, that whatever comes up we'll always be true to each other. If one of us is wounded, the other stays with him; if he's in prison, he gets him out; if he's killed, he avenges his – "
"Say," broke in Bud, jostling him rudely as he reached into the saddle-bags, "let me carry that bottle for a while."
He took a big drink out of it to prevent De Lancey from getting it all and shoved it inside his overalls.
"All right, pardner," he continued, with a mocking smile, "anything you say. I never use oaths myself much, but anything to oblige."
"No, but I mean it, Bud!" cried De Lancey. "Here's the proposition now: Whatever happens, we stay with each other till this deal is finished; on all scratch cases we match money to see who's it; and if we tangle over some girl the best man wins and the other one stays away. We leave it to the girl which one wins. Will you shake hands on that?"
"Don't need to," responded Bud; "I'll do it anyway."
"Well, shake on it, then!" insisted De Lancey, holding out his hand.
"Oh, Sally!" burst out Bud, hanging his head in embarrassment, "what's the use of getting mushy?"
But a moment later he leaned over in his saddle and locked hands with a viselike grip.
"My old man told me not to make no such promises," he muttered, "but I'll do it, being's it's you."
V
The journey to Fortuna is a scant fifty miles by measure, but within those eighty kilometers there is a lapse of centuries in standards. As Bud and De Lancey rode out of battle-scarred Agua Negra they traveled a good road, well worn by the Mexican wood-wagons that hauled in mesquit from the hills. Then, as they left the town and the wood roads scattered, the highway changed by degrees to a broad trail, dug deep by the feet of pack-animals and marked but lightly with wheels. It followed along the
