eparted
five minutes later. But at Webb, a few miles out, where it was flagged
to take on a traveler, he abandoned that manner of escape. There were
telegraph stations ahead; and the Kid looked askance at electricity and
steam. Saddle and spur were his rocks of safety.

The man whom he had shot was a stranger to him. But the Kid knew that he
was of the Corralitos outfit from Hidalgo; and that the punchers from
that ranch were more relentless and vengeful than Kentucky feudists when
wrong or harm was done to one of them. So, with the wisdom that has
characterized many great fighters, the Kid decided to pile up as many
leagues as possible of chaparral and pear between himself and the
retaliation of the Corralitos bunch.

Near the station was a store; and near the store, scattered among the
mesquits and elms, stood the saddled horses of the customers. Most of
them waited, half asleep, with sagging limbs and drooping heads. But
one, a long-legged roan with a curved neck, snorted and pawed the turf.
Him the Kid mounted, gripped with his knees, and slapped gently with the
owner's own quirt.

If the slaying of the temerarious card-player had cast a cloud over the
Kid's standing as a good and true citizen, this last act of his veiled
his figure in the darkest shadows of disrepute. On the Rio Grande
border, if you take a man's life you sometimes take trash; but if you
take his horse, you take a thing the loss of which renders him poor,
indeed, and which enriches you not--if you are caught. For the Kid there
was no turning back now.

With the springing roan under him he felt little care or uneasiness.
After a five-mile gallop he drew in to the plainsman's jogging trot, and
rode northeastward toward the Nueces River bottoms. He knew the country
well--its most tortuous and obscure trails through the great wilderness
of brush and pear, and its camps and lonesome ranches where one might
find safe entertainment. Always he bore to the east; for the Kid had
never seen the ocean, and he had a fancy to lay his hand upon the mane
of the great Gulf, the gamesome colt of the greater waters.

So after three days he stood on the shore at Corpus Christi, and looked
out across the gentle ripples of a quiet sea.

Captain Boone, of the schooner Flyaway, stood near his skiff, which
one of his crew was guarding in the surf. When ready to sail he
had discovered that one of the necessaries of life, in the
parallelogrammatic shape of plug tobacc