“He carried the money over forty miles that night, and delivered it safely in the morning to the proper parties.  This act of his aroused the admiration of these sheep men beyond a point of safety.  They paid for the sheep, were gone for a few months, sold out their flocks to good advantage, and came back to buy more.  This second time they did not take the precaution to have the banker hire the man, but did so themselves, intending to deposit their money with a different house farther up the river.  They confided to him that they had quite a sum of money with them, and that they would deposit it with the same merchant to whom he had carried the money before.  The first night they camped the Mexican murdered them both, took the money, and crossed into Mexico.  He hid their bodies, and it was months before they were missed, and a year before their bones were found.  He had plenty of time to go to the ends of the earth before his crime would be discovered.

“Now that Mexican would never think of betraying the banker, his old friend and patron, his muy bueno amigo.  There were obligations that he could not think of breaking with the banker; but these fool sheep men, supposing it was simple honesty, paid the penalty of their confidence with their lives.  Now, when he rode over this same road alone, a few months before, with over five thousand dollars in money belonging to these same men, all he would need to have done was to ride across the river.  When there were no obligations binding, he was willing to add murder to robbery.  Some folks say that Mexicans are good people; it is the climate, possibly, but they can always be depended on to assay high in treachery.”

“What guard are you going to put me on to-night?” inquired old man Carter of Baugh.

“This outfit,” said Baugh, in reply, “don’t allow any tenderfoot around the cattle,—­at night, at least.  You’d better play you’re company; somebody that’s come.  If you’re so very anxious to do something, the cook may let you rustle wood or carry water.  We’ll fix you up a bed after a little, and see that you get into it where you can sleep and be harmless.

“Colonel,” added Baugh, “why is it that you never tell that experience you had once amongst the greasers?”

“Well, there was nothing funny in it to me,” said Carter, “and they say I never tell it twice alike.”

“Why, certainly, tell us,” said the cattle-buyer.  “I’ve never heard it.  Don’t throw off to-night.”

“It was a good many years ago,” began old man George, “but the incident is very clear in my mind.  I was working for a month’s wages then myself.  We were driving cattle out of Mexico.  The people I was working for contracted for a herd down in Chihuahua, about four hundred miles south of El Paso.  We sent in our own outfit, wagon, horses, and men, two weeks before.  I was kept behind to take in the funds to pay for the cattle.  The day before I started, my people drew out of the bank twenty-eight thousand dollars, mostly large bills.  They wired ahead and engaged a rig to take me from the station where I left the railroad to the ranch, something like ninety miles.