ulling out a buckskin bag.

With three hundred dollars he had gone to Laredo for his regular
"blowout." The duel in Valdos's had cut short his season of
hilarity, but it had left him with nearly $200 for aid in the flight
that it had made necessary.

"All right, buddy," said the captain. "I hope your ma won't blame me
for this little childish escapade of yours." He beckoned to one of
the boat's crew. "Let Sanchez lift you out to the skiff so you won't
get your feet wet."

Thacker, the United States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet
drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his
desired state of beatitude--a state wherein he sang ancient maudlin
vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot with banana
peels--until the middle of the afternoon. So, when he looked up from
his hammock at the sound of a slight cough, and saw the Kid standing
in the door of the consulate, he was still in a condition to extend
the hospitality and courtesy due from the representative of a great
nation. "Don't disturb yourself," said the Kid, easily. "I just
dropped in. They told me it was customary to light at your camp
before starting in to round up the town. I just came in on a ship
from Texas."

"Glad to see you, Mr.--" said the consul.

The Kid laughed.

"Sprague Dalton," he said. "It sounds funny to me to hear it. I'm
called the Llano Kid in the Rio Grande country."

"I'm Thacker," said the consul. "Take that cane-bottom chair. Now
if you've come to invest, you want somebody to advise you. These
dingies will cheat you out of the gold in your teeth if you don't
understand their ways. Try a cigar?"

"Much obliged," said the Kid, "but if it wasn't for my corn shucks
and the little bag in my back pocket I couldn't live a minute." He
took out his "makings," and rolled a cigarette.

"They speak Spanish here," said the consul. "You'll need an
interpreter. If there's anything I can do, why, I'd be delighted. If
you're buying fruit lands or looking for a concession of any sort,
you'll want somebody who knows the ropes to look out for you."

"I speak Spanish," said the Kid, "about nine times better than I do
English. Everybody speaks it on the range where I come from. And I'm
not in the market for anything."

"You speak Spanish?" said Thacker thoughtfully. He regarded the kid
absorbedly.

"You look like a Spaniard, too," he continued. "And you're from
Texas. And you can't be more than twenty or twenty-one.