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At the end of the second week I came in at noon as per usual to fix him up with grub. I didn’t pay any attention to him, for he was quiet. As I was bending over the fire he spoke. Usually I didn’t bother with his talk, for it didn’t mean anything, but something in his voice made me turn. He was lying on his side, those black eyes of his blazing at me, but now both of them saw the same distance.

“Where are my clothes?” he asked, very intense.

“You ain’t in any shape to want clothes,” said I. “Lie still.”

I hadn’t any more than got the words out of my mouth before he was atop me. His method was a winner. He had me by the throat with his hand, and I felt the point of the hook pricking the back of my neck. One little squeeze–Talk about your deadly weapons!

But he’d been too sick and too long abed. He turned dizzy and keeled over, and I dumped him back on the bunk. Then I put my six-shooter on.

In a minute or so he came to.

“Now you’re a nice, sweet proposition,” said I, as soon as I was sure he could understand me. “Here I pick you up on the street and save your worthless carcass, and the first chance you get you try to crawl my hump. Explain.”

“Where’s my clothes?” he demanded again, very fierce.

“For heaven’s sake,” I yelled at him, “what’s the matter with you and your old clothes? There ain’t enough of them to dust a fiddle with anyway. What do you think I’d want with them? They’re safe enough.”‘

“Let me have them,” he begged.

“Now, look here,” said I, “you can’t get up to-day. You ain’t fit.”

“I know,” he pleaded, “but let me see them.”

Just to satisfy him I passed over his old duds.

“I’ve been robbed,” he cried.

“Well,” said I, “what did you expect would happen to you lying around Yuma after midnight with a hole in your head?”

“Where’s my coat?” he asked.

“You had no coat when I picked you up,” I replied.

He looked at me mighty suspicious, but didn’t say anything more–he wouldn’t even answer when I spoke to him. After he’d eaten a fair meal he fell asleep. When I came back that evening the bunk was empty and he was gone.

I didn’t see him again for two days. Then I caught sight of him quite a ways off. He nodded at me very sour, and dodged around the corner of the store.

“Guess he suspicions I stole that old coat of his,” thinks I; and afterwards I found that my surmise had been correct.

However, he didn’t stay long in that frame of mind. It was along towards evening, and I was walking on the banks looking down over the muddy old Colorado, as I always liked to do. The sun had just set, and the mountains had turned hard and stiff, as they do after the glow, and the sky above them was a thousand million miles deep of pale green-gold light. A pair of Greasers were ahead of me, but I could see only their outlines, and they didn’t seem to interfere any with the scenery. Suddenly a black figure seemed to rise up out of the ground; the Mexican man went down as though he’d been jerked with a string, and the woman screeched.

I ran up, pulling my gun. The Mex was flat on his face, his arms stretched out. On the middle of his back knelt my one-armed friend. And that sharp hook was caught neatly under the point of the Mexican’s jaw. You bet he lay still.

I really think I was just in time to save the man’s life. According to my belief another minute would have buried the hook in the Mexican’s neck. Anyway, I thrust the muzzle of my Colt’s into the sailor’s face.