DON LUIS'S ENGINEERING PROBLEM
"Gato?" whispered Harry. "What is he doing around here?"
"There is no reason why we should care what he is doing," Tom
returned. "He isn't in the employ of the mine. Come along, Harry."
But Nicolas seized the young chief engineer by the arm.
"Beat me, if you will, Senor Americano," pleaded Nicolas. "But
don't encounter Gato. It would be as much as your life is worth."
"Why? Is Gato on the warpath for us?" Tom questioned.
"I fear so," Nicolas answered. "Don't let him see you."
"But I must see him, if the fellow is out for us," muttered Tom.
"Show me where he is."
"He and three or four men are camped just around there," said
the Mexican servant, pointing.
"Come along, Harry," Tom whispered. "Go cat-foot."
Ere the young engineers came in sight around the turn a slight
glow of light against the stones caught their glance. Tom held
a hand behind him as a signal to Hazelton to slow up. Then Reade
peered around a jutting ledge of rock.
On the ground, around a low camp-fire, were seated four Mexicans.
Two of the number had rifles, that lay on the ground near them.
Behind them, an ugly scowl on his face, sat Gato, his back resting
against a rock.
"But you will not find your enemies out here to-night, Senor Gato,"
softly remarked one of the quartette around the fire.
"No," admitted Gato, in a growling voice.
"Then why are we waiting here?"
"Because it pleases me," snapped the big fellow. "What ails you?
Am I not paying you?"
"But two of us--and I am one of them--do not like to be seen,"
rejoined the speaker at the fire. "The troops hunt us. There
is a price on our heads."
"Bandits!" muttered Tom Reade, under his breath, as he drew back.
"I have heard that Mexico is overrun with bandits. These gentlemen
are some of the fraternity."
"Take us up to the house, Gato," urged one of the men at the fire.
"We shall know how to enter and find your friends. Everyone sleeps
there. It will be the safer way."
"It does not suit me," retorted Gato, sullenly.
"But why not?"
"Am I not paying you?"
"Yes."
"Then take my orders and do not ask questions."
At this there were sounds of dissatisfaction from all four of
these bad men.
"For one thing," Gato explained, "Don Luis would not like it. He
would accuse me of treachery--or worse. I do not want Don Luis's
ill will, you see."
"But Don Luis will be angry, in any case, if you injure his engineers,
won't he?" asked one of the men.
"A little, but after a while, Don Luis will not care what I do to
the Americanos," growled Pedro Gato.
"Humph! That's interesting--if true," whispered Tom Reade.
"Yet what are we doing here?" insisted one of the men. "Here,
so close to where the troops might pick us up?"
"You are obeying orders," snarled Gato.
"But that information is not quite enough to suit us," objected
one of the Mexicans.
"You might go your own way, then," sneered Gato. "I can find
other men who are not so curious. However, I will say that, when
daylight comes, we will hide not far from here. None of you know
the Americanos by sight. I will point them out to you as they
pass by in the daylight."
"And then--what?" pressed one of the rough men. "Are we to kill
the Americanos from ambush?"
"Eh?" gasped Tom Reade, with a start.
"If you have to," nodded Pedro Gato. "Though, in that case, I shall
call you clumsy. I shall pay you just four times as much if you
bring them to me as prisoners. Remember that. Before I despatch
these infernal Gringos I shall want the fun of tormenting them."
"Oh, you will eh?" thought Tom, with a slight shudder.
"I heard, Gato," ventured one of the Mexicans, incautiously, "that
one of the Americanos beat you fearfully--that he threw you down
and stamped on you."
"It is a lie!" uttered Gato, leaping to his feet, his face distorted
with rage. "It is a lie, I tell you. The man does not live who
can beat me in a fight."
"I was struck with amazement at the tale," admitted the Mexican
who had brought about this outburst.
"And well you might be," continued Gato, savagely. "But the Americanos
procured my discharge. And that was humiliation enough."
"Yet what difference does it make, Gato. As soon as Don Luis
is through with the Americanos he will restore you to your old
position."
"It is because the Americanos treated me with such contempt,"
retorted Pedro. "No man sneers at me and lives."
"You unhung bandit!" muttered Tom under his breath. "Why don't
you tell your bandit friends that you are angry because of the
trouncing I gave you before a lot of men? But I suppose you hate
to lose caste, even before such ragged specimens as your friends."
Suddenly one of the men around the fire snatched at his rifle.
Next scattering the embers of the fire, the fellow threw himself
down flat, peering down the road.
"The troops are coming," he whispered. "I hear their horses."
"The horses that you hear are mules," laughed Gato, harshly.
"It is the nightly transport of ore down to _El Sombrero_. Just
now Don Luis is having fine ore brought over the hills from another
mine and dumped into _El Sombrero_."
"Why should he bring ore from another mine to _El Sombrero_?"
asked one of the men, curiously.
"How should I know?" demanded Gato, shrugging his shoulders and
spitting on the ground. "Why should I concern myself with the
business that belongs to an hidalgo like Don Luis?"
"It is queer that--"
"Silence!" hissed Gato. "Do not meddle with the secrets of Don
Luis Montez, or you will be sorry for it."
Gato's explanation about the mule-train had quieted the fears
of the bandits as to the approach of troops. In some mountainous
parts of Mexico the government's troops are nearly always on the
trail of bandits and the petty warfare is a brisk one.
"Go to sleep, my friends. There will be nothing to do until day
comes."
"Then, good Gato, take us somewhere off this road," pleaded one
of the men. "It is too public here to be to our liking."
"You may go to a quieter place," nodded Gato. "You know where--the
place I showed you this afternoon. As for me, after the mule-train
has left the mine, I must go there. I will join you before daybreak."
"We'll go now, then," muttered one of the men, rising.
They were coming up the road in the direction of the young engineers.
There was no time to retreat. Tom glanced swiftly around. Then
he made a sign to Harry. Both young engineers flattened themselves
out behind a pile of stones at the roadside. Their biding-place
was far from being a safe one. But four drowsy bandits plodded
by without espying the eavesdroppers. As for Nicolas, he had
vanished like the mist before the sun.
"Ha-ho-hum!" yawned Pedro Gato, audibly.
Tom raised his head, studying their immediate surroundings. He
soon fancied he saw a safe way of slipping off to the southward
and finding the road again below where Gato stood.
Signing to Hazelton, Reade rose softly and started off. Two or
three minutes later the young engineers were a hundred yards away
from Gato, though in a rock-littered field where a single incautious
step might betray them.
"Come on, now," whispered Tom. "Toward the mine."
"And run into Gato?" grimaced Harry. "Great!"
"If we meet him we ought to get away with him between us," Tom
retorted. "One of us did him up this morning."
"Go ahead, Tom!"
Reade led the way in the darkness. They skirted the road, though
keeping a sharp lookout.
"There are the lights of the mule-train ahead," whispered Tom.
"Now, we're close enough to see things, for there is _El Sombrero_
just ahead."
"What's the game, anyway?" whispered Harry.
"Surely you guess," protested Tom.
"Why, it seems that Don Luis is having ore from another mine brought
down in the dead of the night."
"Yes, and a lot of it," Tom went on. "Did you notice how much
rich ore there was in each tunnel to-day? And did you notice,
too, that when blasts were made with us looking on, no ore worthy
of the name was dug loose? Don Luis has been spending a lot of
money for ore with which to salt his own mine!"
"Salting" a mine consists of putting the gold into a mine to be
removed. Such salting gives a worthless mine the appearance of being
a very rich one.
"But why should Don Luis want to salt his own mine?" muttered
Harry.
"So that he can sell it, of course!"
"But he doesn't want to sell."
"He says he doesn't," Tom retorted, with scorn. "This afternoon,
you remember, he got me to copy a report in English about his
mine and then he wanted us to sign the report as engineers. Doesn't
that look as though he wanted to sell? Harry, Don Luis has buyers
in sight for his mine, and he'll sell it for a big profit provided
he can impose on the buyers!"
"What does he want us for, then? He spoke of engineering problems."
"Don Luis's engineering problem," uttered Tom Reade, with deep
scorn, "is simply to find two clean and honest engineers who'll
sign a lying report and enable him to swindle some man or group
of men out of a fortune."
"Then Don Luis is a swindler, and we'll throw up the job," returned
Harry Hazelton, vehemently. "We'll quit."
"We won't help him swindle any one," Tom rejoined. "We won't
quit just yet, but we'll stick just long enough to see whether
we can't expose the scoundrel as he deserves! Harry, we'll have
to be crafty, too. We must not let him see, too soon, that we
are aware of his trickery."