rooms, perhaps. I
often shift and change my quarters, and those of my household;
especially if I suspect I have some reason for doing so. It adds
interest to an otherwise uneventful life."
He was eying me sardonically, evidently gloating over the situation as
he found it.
"How did you get on that roof? Who let you inside the walls?" he
demanded, abruptly.
I merely smiled at him.
"That we can determine later," he observed, resuming command of himself.
I measured my chances, and found them at present a minus quantity. The
old man was separated from me by a table, and he held my own revolver
ready for instant use. So I stood tight and waited.
The room was an almost exact replica of the one in which I had spent the
night so short a time before; the same long narrow transom near the
ceiling, the same barred windows opening on the court, the same closet
against the blank wall. Hooper had evidently inhabited it for some days,
for it was filled with his personal belongings. Indeed he must have
moved in _en bloc_ when his ward had been moved out, for none of the
furnishings showed the feminine touch, and several articles could have
belonged only to the old man personally. Of such was a small iron safe
in one corner and a tall old-fashioned desk crammed with papers.
But if I decided overt action unwise at this moment, I decidedly went
into action the next. Hooper whistled and four Mexicans appeared with
ropes. Somehow I knew if they once hog-tied me I would never get another
chance. Better dead now than helpless in the morning, for what that old
buzzard might want of me.
One of them tossed a loop at me. I struck it aside and sailed in.
It had always been my profound and contemptuous belief that I could lick
any four Mexicans. Now I had to take that back. I could not. But I gave
the man argument, and by the time they had my elbows lashed behind me
and my legs tied to the legs of one of those big solid chairs they like
to name as "Mission style," I had marked them up and torn their pretty
clothes and smashed a lot of junk around the place and generally got
them so mad they would have knifed me in a holy second if it had not
been for Old Man Hooper. The latter held up the lamp where it wouldn't
get smashed and admonished them in no uncertain terms that he wanted me
alive and comparatively undamaged. Oh, sure! they mussed me up, too. I
wasn't very pretty, either.
The bravos withdrew muttering curses, as the stor
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