id, "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. I wonder if you've got
any nerve."

"You got a deal of some kind to put through?" asked the Texan, with
unexpected shrewdness.

"Are you open to a proposition?" said Thacker.

"What's the use to deny it?" said the Kid. "I got into a little gun
frolic down in Laredo and plugged a white man. There wasn't any Mexican
handy. And I come down to your parrot-and-monkey range just for to smell
the morning-glories and marigolds. Now, do you _sabe_?"

Thacker got up and closed the door.

"Let me see your hand," he said.

He took the Kid's left hand, and examined the back of it closely.

"I can do it," he said excitedly. "Your flesh is as hard as wood and as
healthy as a baby's. It will heal in a week."

"If it's a fist fight you want to back me for," said the Kid, "don't put
your money up yet. Make it gun work, and I'll keep you company. But no
barehanded scrapping, like ladies at a tea-party, for me."

"It's easier than that," said Thacker. "Just step here, will you?"

Through the window he pointed to a two-story white-stuccoed house with
wide galleries rising amid the deep green tropical foliage on a wooded
hill that sloped gently from the sea.

"In that house," said Thacker, "a fine old Castilian gentleman and his
wife are yearning to gather you into their arms and fill your pockets
with money. Old Santos Urique lives there. He owns half the gold-mines
in the country."

"You haven't been eating loco weed, have you?" asked the Kid.

"Sit down again," said Thacker, "and I'll tell you. Twelve years ago
they lost a kid. No, he didn't die--although most of 'em here do from
drinking the surface water. He was a wild little devil, even if he
wasn't but eight years old. Everybody knows about it. Some Americans who
were through here prospecting for gold had letters to Senor Urique, and
the boy was a favorite with them. They filled his head with big stories
about the States; and about a month after they left, the kid
disappeared, too. He was supposed to have stowed himself away among the
banana bunches on a fruit steamer, and gone to New Orleans. He was seen
once afterward in Texas,