s with the
trigger. My blood is shooting through my veins once more, and, by
thunder, I'm just as young at this moment as either of you fellows."

"Did you get any idea at Montillo who this guerilla chief might be?"
asked Bert.

"Why, yes," replied Melton, slowly and almost reluctantly. "Of course
they're only guessing, and they may not have the right dope. But while
the consul was spelling with that mayor fellow, I caught every once in a
while the word 'El Tigre.' That means 'the Tiger' in our language, and
on our way back to the office he told me enough to show how well the name
fits him. Some of the stories--but there," he broke off, checking
himself abruptly, "it's getting late, and we've got to be stirring at the
first streak of daylight. Now you fellows turn in and I'll sit here and
figure things out a little."

Bert and Tom vigorously protested that they would take turns in watching,
but he waved them off with a good humor that still had in it a touch of
finality.

"Not a bit of it," he said. "More than once I've gone days and nights
together without a wink of sleep, and felt none the worse for it. I'm a
tough old knot, but you young fellows have got to have your sleep.
Besides, I've got a lot of things I want to think out before morning."

Under his kindly but forceful persistence, there was nothing else to be
done without offending him, and he had done too much for them not to have
his way in this. So, under protest, they stretched their weary bodies on
the rude couch they had prepared. At first their minds were so full of
anxious thoughts about Dick that it seemed as though they couldn't sleep.
But old nature had her way with them and before long they were lost in
the sleep of utter exhaustion.

"Mighty lucky I stopped that fool tongue of mine in time," mused Melton,
as he looked at their tired faces, "or there would have been no sleep for
them this night."

For it was a gruesome story that the consul had told him that afternoon.
A fearful reckoning would be demanded of the "Tiger" at the day of
judgment. A more villainous character could not be found in the length
and breadth of Mexico. Awful tales were told of him and others more
horrible _could_ not be told. That he was a robber and murderer went
without saying. Every bandit chief was that. Those were mere everyday
incidents of the "profession." But the evil preeminence of the Tiger lay
in his love of torture for its own sake. He re