Half an hour afterward--quick time for Buenas Tierras--Señor
Urique's ancient landau drove to the consul's door, with the
barefooted coachman beating and shouting at the team of fat, awkward
horses.
A tall man with a white moustache alighted, and assisted to the
ground a lady who was dressed and veiled in unrelieved black.
The two hastened inside, and were met by Thacker with his best
diplomatic bow. By his desk stood a slender young man with
clear-cut, sun-browned features and smoothly brushed black hair.
Señora Urique threw back her black veil with a quick gesture. She
was past middle age, and her hair was beginning to silver, but her
full, proud figure and clear olive skin retained traces of the
beauty peculiar to the Basque province. But, once you had seen her
eyes, and comprehended the great sadness that was revealed in their
deep shadows and hopeless expression, you saw that the woman lived
only in some memory.
She bent upon the young man a long look of the most agonized
questioning. Then her great black eyes turned, and her gaze rested
upon his left hand. And then with a sob, not loud, but seeming to
shake the room, she cried "_Hijo mio!_" and caught the Llano Kid to
her heart.
A month afterward the Kid came to the consulate in response to a
message sent by Thacker.
He looked the young Spanish _caballero_. His clothes were imported,
and the wiles of the jewellers had not been spent upon him in vain.
A more than respectable diamond shone on his finger as he rolled a
shuck cigarette.
"What's doing?" asked Thacker.
"Nothing much," said the Kid calmly. "I eat my first iguana steak
to-day. They're them big lizards, you _sabe_? I reckon, though, that
frijoles and side bacon would do me about as well. Do you care for
iguanas, Thacker?"
"No, nor for some other kinds of reptiles," said Thacker.
It was three in the afternoon, and in another hour he would be in
his state of beatitude.
"It's time you were making good, sonny," he went on, with an ugly
look on his reddened face. "You're not playing up to me square.
You've been the prodigal son for four weeks now, and you could have
had veal for every meal on a gold dish if you'd wanted it. Now, Mr.
Kid, do you think it's right to leave me out so long on a husk diet?
What's the trouble? Don't you get your filial eyes on anything
that looks like cash in the Casa Blanca? Don't tell me you don't.
Everybody knows where old Urique keeps his stuff. It's U.S.
currency, too; he don't accept anything else. What's doing? Don't
say 'nothing' this time."
"Why, sure," said the Kid, admiring his diamond, "there's plenty of
money up there. I'm no judge of collateral in bunches, but I will
undertake for to say that I've seen the rise of $50,000 at a time in
that tin grub box that my adopted father calls his safe. And he lets
me carry the key sometimes just to show me that he knows I'm the
real little Francisco that strayed from the herd a long time ago."
"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked Thacker, angrily. "Don't you
forget that I can upset your apple-cart any day I want to. If old
Urique knew you were an imposter, what sort of things would happen
to you? Oh, you don't know this country, Mr. Texas Kid. The laws
here have got mustard spread between 'em. These people here'd
stretch you out like a frog that had been stepped on, and give you
about fifty sticks at every corner of the plaza. And they'd wear
every stick out, too. What was left of you they'd feed to
alligators."
"I might just as well tell you now, pardner," said the Kid, sliding
down low on his steamer chair, "that things are going to stay just
as they are. They're about right now."
"What do you mean?" asked Thacker, rattling the bottom of his glass
on his desk.
"The scheme's off," said the Kid. "And whenever you have the
pleasure of speaking to me address me as Don Francisco Urique. I'll
guarantee I'll answer to it. We'll let Colonel Urique keep his
money. His little tin safe is as good as the time-locker in the
First National Bank of Laredo as far as you and me are concerned."
"You're going to throw me down, then, are you?" said the consul.
"Sure," said the Kid cheerfully. "Throw you down. That's it. And now
I'll tell you why. The first night I was up at the colonel's house
they introduced me to a bedroom. No blankets on the floor--a real
room, with a bed and things in it. And before I was asleep, in comes
this artificial mother of mine and tucks in the covers. 'Panchito,'
she says, 'my little lost one, God has brought you back to me. I
bless His name forever.' It was that, or some truck like that, she
said. And down comes a drop or two of rain and hits me on the nose.
And all that stuck by me, Mr. Thacker. And it's been that way ever
since. And it's got to stay that way. Don't you think that it's for
what's in it for me, either, that I say so. If you have any such
ideas, keep 'em to yourself. I haven't had much truck with women in
my life, and no mothers to speak of, but here's a lady that we've
got to keep fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm a
low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on this trail instead
of God, but I'll travel it to the end. And now, don't forget that
I'm Don Francisco Urique whenever you happen to mention my name."
"I'll expose you to-day, you--you double-dyed traitor," stammered
Thacker.
The Kid arose and, without violence, took Thacker by the throat with
a hand of steel, and shoved him slowly into a corner. Then he drew
from under his left arm his pearl-handled .45 and poked the cold
muzzle of it against the consul's mouth.
"I told you why I come here," he said, with his old freezing smile.
"If I leave here, you'll be the reason. Never forget it, pardner.
Now, what is my name?"
"Er--Don Francisco Urique," gasped Thacker.
From outside came a sound of wheels, and the shouting of some one,
and the sharp thwacks of a wooden whipstock upon the backs of fat
horses.
The Kid put up his gun, and walked toward the door. But he turned
again and came back to the trembling Thacker, and held up his left
hand with its back toward the consul.
"There's one more reason," he said slowly, "why things have got to
stand as they are. The fellow I killed in Laredo had one of them
same pictures on his left hand."
Outside, the ancient landau of Don Santos Urique rattled to the
door. The coachman ceased his bellowing. Señora Urique, in a
voluminous gay gown of white lace and flying ribbons, leaned forward
with a happy look in her great soft eyes.
"Are you within, dear son?" she called, in the rippling Castilian.
"_Madre mia, yo vengo_ [mother, I come]," answered the young Don
Francisco Urique.