Chapter 14 - Page 2

"No, I won't."

"Very well! If I go to prison you shall go, too. I shall tell all I know and we shall be companions, you and I."

Austin's temper rose at the threat. "Bah!" he cried, contemptuously. "There's nothing against me except running arms, and the embargo is off now. It's a joke, anyhow. Nobody was ever convicted, even when the embargo was in effect. Why, the government winks at anybody who helps the Rebels."

"Oh, that is nothing!" Urbina agreed; "but you would not wish to be called a cattle thief, eh?"

"What d'you mean?"

"You knew that the stealing went on."

"Huh! I should say I did. Haven't I lost a lot of horses?"

Lewis interposed, impatiently: "Say! Suppose Adolfo tells what he knows about them horses? Suppose he tells how you framed it to have your own stock run across, on shares, so's you could get more money to go hifalutin' around San Antone without your wife knowing it? I reckon you wouldn't care to have that get out."

"You can't prove it," growled "Young Ed."

"Oh! I reckon it can be proved all right," confidently asserted Lewis.

"Nobody'd believe such a thing."

"Folks are ready to believe 'most anything about you. Your wife would believe it. Ain't Las Palmas in her name, and don't she give you so much a month to spend? If them ain't facts, you lied to me."

"Yes!" Urbina supplemented. "I can swear to all that. And I can swear also that you knew about those calves the other day."

"What!" Ed started.

"Why not? We were together; your own people saw us. Well, then, if you would steal your wife's horses, why would you not steal your neighbor's cattle? The relatives of poor Pino Garza--God rest his soul!--will bear me out. I have arranged for that. Suppose I tell the jury that there were three of us in that pasture of yours, instead of two? What then? I would be lonely in prison without a good compadre to bear me company." Urbina grinned in evil triumph.

"This is the damnedest outrage I ever heard of," gasped "Young Ed." "It's a fairy story--"

"Prove it," chuckled Lewis. "The prosecuting attorney'd eat it up, Ed. It sounds kind of crazy, but you can't ask Adolfo to take to the brush and live like a javelin just for your sake, when you could square him with a word."

There was a moment or two of silence, during which the visitors watched the face of the man whose weakness they both knew. At last Ed Austin ventured to say, apologetically:

"I'm willing to do almost anything to help Adolfo, but--they'll make a liar of me if I take the stand. Isn't there some other way out?"

"I