www.freeclassicebooks.com

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.

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

229

The Mucker