be jogging along towards
Pachuca."

Then he bethought him of the ape, which he had no mind to lose
after his exciting experience. But the animal was nowhere to be
seen.

"I wonder if I could raise him with a shot," soliloquized
Billie.

He raised his weapon, which he still carried in his hand, and
fired aimlessly, while he turned his eyes in various directions,
but there was nothing to be seen.

"Oh, well," he thought, "what's the difference? He'd just be a
nuisance anyway. I might as well be trudging along."

He jumped off the station platform and proceeded down the track,
filling the magazine to his automatic as he went. Then having
finished the task, he returned it to his holster and once more
began counting the ties.

"One, two, three, four, five, six----"

Bing! And a stone whistled by his head.

Billie turned, and as he did so a second stone from the same
source struck him on the temple, and he fell to the ground.

A second later the ape sprang from a palm beside the station and
ran toward him, stopping every few feet to see if the lad would
rise.

When within a few feet of the prostrate lad the animal made a
leap and landed upon his body. In another instant it had gained
possession of Billie's weapon, which it examined curiously for a
moment, ere it sprang away and stationed itself some two rods
distant, where it sat watching with the weapon aimed directly at
him.

For perhaps five minutes the two retained their relative
positions and then Billie began to regain consciousness. Several
times he moved uneasily and then he suddenly sat up and looked
around.

"I wonder what happened," he finally thought, and then he became
conscious of a pain in his head.

He raised his hand to the aching spot and his fingers encountered
a big lump.

The truth came upon him like a flash. He dropped his hand to his
holster, and sprang to his feet.

As he did so he caught sight of the ape and found himself looking
into the business end of his own weapon.

With a yell he dropped to the ground as though the expected had
happened.

But when no shot followed, he began to regain his wits and lay
still trying to figure out once more just how much the ape might
know about the use of the weapon.

He remembered the old saying that a gun was a dangerous weapon
without lock, stock or barrel, because a man killed his wife
with the ramrod; and so he figured that an animal which had
intelligence enough to throw a stone