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“Well, the boat comes up an’ the feemale party jumps out and comes up the let-down stairway, onto the deck. Without sayin’ a word she hands Hardenberg the half o’ the card and he fishes out his half an’ matches the two by the light o’ a lantern.

“By this time the rowboat has gone a little ways off, an’ then at last Hardenberg says:

“’Welkum aboard, Signorita.’

“And Strokher cuts in with——

“’We thought it was to be a man that ‘ud join us here to take command, butyou,’ he says—an’ oh, butter wouldn’t a-melted in his mouth—’Butyouhe says, ‘is always our mistress.

“’Very right,bueno. Me good fellows,’ says the Signorita, ‘but don’t you be afraid that they’s no man is at the head o’ this business.’ An’ with that the party chucks off hat an’ skirts,and I’ll be Mexican if it wa’n’t a man after all!

“’I’m the Signor Barreto Palachi, gentlemen,’ says he.’The gringo police who wanted for to arrest me made the disguise necessary. Gentlemen, I regret to have been obliged to deceive such gallant compadres; but war knows no law.’

“Hardenberg and Strokher gives one look at the Signor and another at their own spiled faces, then:

“’Come back here with the boat!’ roars Hardenberg over the side, and with that—(upon me word you’d a-thought they two both were moved with the same spring)—over they goes into the water and strikes out hands over hands for the boat as hard as ever they kin lay to it. The boat meets ’em—Lord knows what the party at the oars thought—they climbs in an’ the last I sees of ’em they was puttin’ for shore—each havin’ taken a oar from the boatman, an’ they sure was makin’ that boathum.

“Well, we sails away eventually without ’em; an’ a year or more afterward I crosses their trail again in Cy Ryder’s office in ‘Frisco. ”

“Did you ask them about it all?” said I.

“Mister Man,” observed Bunt. “I’m several kinds of a fool; I know it. But sometimes I’m wise. I wishes for to live as long as I can, an’ die when I can’t help it. I doesnot, neither there, nor thereafterward, ever make no joke, nor yet no alloosion about, or concerning the Signorita Esperanza Palachi in the hearin’ o’ Hardenberg an’ Strokher. I’ve seen—(ye remember)—both those boys use their fists—an’ likewise Hardenberg, as he says hisself, shoot
s with both hands. ”