"'Very right, bueno. Me good fellows,' says the Sigñorita, '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 Sigñor 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 Sigñor 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 boat hum.
"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 does not, neither
there, nor thereafterward, ever make no joke, nor yet no alloosion about, or concerning
the Sigñorita 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,
shoots with both hands."
