lutionary chiefs of the new party men, arms, and
money, he might hope for a warm reception.

During the fortnight referred to he had communicated with one Angel
Gonzales, previously mentioned, who had also quarreled with Villa and been
rigorously persecuted by him. Gonzales was at the head of a small band
which he was quite willing to consolidate with Pachuca's men, and they had
agreed to meet and discuss ways and means. It was toward this rendezvous
that Pachuca had been journeying when he stopped to raid the Athens mining
camp.

To be stopped at such a time was not to be endured. Pachuca looked around
the small room angrily. He looked out of the window. It was a bad drop but
not an impossible one. An athlete might manage it, he supposed, but he was
not an athlete--he was a gentleman and a soldier. It would be a nasty
thing to try it and to break a leg. He had never tried breaking a leg but
he remembered having heard the family physician say that a broken leg
meant a six weeks' vacation and he had no mind for a vacation on those
terms.

He went to the door--locked, of course, he had heard the girl turn the
key, but one might burst it open. He tried, several times, but the door
held maddeningly. There was no transom, no other door--nothing but the
plastered walls and the window. He turned again to the window, and threw
it open. The cool night air came in refreshingly. In the distance, the
dark shapes of the mountains stood out forbiddingly in the moonlight.
Millions of stars winked and twinkled. Gaunt cacti reared their ungainly
shapes--beautiful because of their very ugliness.

Somewhere over in those mountains Angel Gonzales was wending a torturous
path to meet him. Angel would swear and rage when he did not come. Then he
would probably annex Pachuca's men and their plunder and go cheerfully on
his way. That would be Angel's idea of the philosophical manner of
handling the situation. Juan ground his white teeth in a fury. Again he
hung out of the window. The moonlight was so glaring that he was easily
visible had anyone been watching, but all the lights in Athens were out
and the inhabitants in bed.

Pachuca swung lightly out of the window and with a very cattish agility
caught the sill with both hands and lowered himself. He looked down. It
was the devil of a drop. Ten chances to one he would turn an ankle at the
very least. He made a wry face. One does not do things successfully when
one does them in this frame