ing
and swearing near him.

"You've tied me, you sneaking animal without shame!"

"It's you that's tied me, tete de voleur!"

But as Rodrigo wrested in the dark, Ney found that the brigand's
stumblings corresponded with the tightening about himself. He clutched
at his waist, and discovered a rope.

Both men groped vengefully forward with the line, and lurched into one
another's arms. Each had thought to come on a tree, only to discover
himself tied to the other. In the first start of suspicion, and in no
good humor from splitting headaches, one reached for his knife, the
other for his sabre. But the knife was gone, the sabre was gone.
Forthwith they grappled and strained and breathed by jerks and tumbled
and rolled and wound themselves in the lariat, until at last they lay
exhausted on their backs and blinked up at the beautiful innocent morn
peeping through the trees.

"Now don't you untie yourself till I get untied," ordered Ney.

"Or you yourself," retorted the other.

"Let us both untie at the same time."

"But one might finish first," objected Rodrigo. The brigand had grown
amiable again. He saw advantages in the rope. It was well to have his
prospective ransom never more than a few feet away.

They discussed the problem at length, but were not equal to it. So the
modus vivendi was stretched a rope's length, and the treachery clause
expanded to include any untying or attempted untying before their
arrival at Murguia's. Scrupulously simultaneous, they arose, found their
pistols, and mounted their horses. To guard against any sudden varying
in rapidity of travel and its consequences, each wrapped the lariat once
about his saddle-horn. Where necessary, the brigand rode in front, since
Ney insisted that the other way would reverse their roles of prisoner
and captor. Rodrigo got some tortillas from a charcoal burner, and they
lunched and rested within the forest's edge till dark. But they traveled
all that night in the open country, and approached Murguia's before noon
of the next day. Hoping to find friends about the hacienda's stables,
Rodrigo suggested that they race up the highway into the pasture. He was
thinking that then the Frenchmen might be overpowered the more easily.
Ney fell into the trap. He accepted the challenge and was keen for the
sport. Thus it happened that they all but ran down the Emperor of Mexico
himself, and instead of guerrillas, Rodrigo saw Cossacks and Dragoons.
But the mystery of