except that there’d have been another patriot in his boots and in my office next day proposing a stiffer gouge.

“So Arranzo got his ‘bit,’ and, on top of it, before he went across to join the main bunch around Juarez, he let his men run off three hundred of our mules — thirty thousand dollars’ worth of mule-flesh right there, after I’d sweetened him, too. The yellow skunk!”

“Who is revolutionary chief in our diggings right now?” Paula heard her husband ask with one of his abrupt shifts that she knew of old time tokened his drawing together the many threads of a situation and proceeding to action.

“Raoul Bena.”

“What’s his rank?”