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"But Senor Capitan," cried Miguel, "you do not mean to say that you are going

back to Pesita! He will shoot you down with his own hand when he has learned

what has happened here."

"I guess not," said Billy.

"You'd better go with Miguel, Billy," urged Bridge. "Pesita will not forgive you this.

You've cost him eight men today and he hasn't any more men than he needs at

best. Besides you've made a monkey of him and unless I miss my guess you'll

have to pay for it."

"No," said Billy, "I kind o' like this Pesita gent. I think I'll stick around with him

for a while yet. Anyhow until I've had a chance to see his face after I've made my

report to him. You guys run along now and make your get-away good, an' I'll beat

it back to camp."

He crossed to where the two horses of the slain marksmen were hidden, turned

one of them loose and mounted the other.

"So long, boes!" he cried, and with a wave of his hand wheeled about and spurred

back along the trail over which they had just come.

Miguel and Bridge watched him for a moment, then they, too, mounted and

turned away in the opposite direction. Bridge recited no verse for the balance of

that day. His heart lay heavy in his bosom, for he missed Billy Byrne, and was

fearful of the fate which awaited him at the camp of the bandit.

Billy, blithe as a lark, rode gaily back along the trail to camp. He looked forward

with unmixed delight to his coming interview with Pesita, and to the wild, half-

savage life which association with the bandit promised. All his life had Billy Byrne

fed upon excitement and adventure. As gangster, thug, holdup man and second-

story artist Billy had found food for his appetite within the dismal, sooty streets of

Chicago's great West Side, and then Fate had flung him upon the savage shore of

Yoka to find other forms of adventure where the best that is in a strong man may

be brought out in the stern battle for existence against primeval men and

conditions. The West Side had developed only Billy's basest characteristics. He

might have slipped back easily into the old ways had it not been for HER and the

recollection of that which he had read in her eyes. Love had been there; but

greater than that to hold a man into the straight and narrow path of decency and

honor had been respect and admiration. It had seemed incredible to Billy that a

goddess should feel such things for him--for the same man her scornful lips once

had branded as coward and mucker; yet he had read the truth aright, and since

then Billy Byrne had done his best according to the light that had been given him

to deserve the belief she had in him.

212

The Mucker