ar, twenty feet high at its worst,
crowded almost to its door. It was along the bewildering maze of this
spinous thicket that the speckled roan would bring the Kid to see his
girl. And once, clinging like a lizard to the ridge-pole, high up
under the peaked grass roof, he had heard Tonia, with her Madonna face
and Carmen beauty and humming-bird soul, parley with the sheriff's
posse, denying knowledge of her man in her soft /melange/ of Spanish
and English.

One day the adjutant-general of the State, who is, /ex offico/,
commander of the ranger forces, wrote some sarcastic lines to Captain
Duval of Company X, stationed at Laredo, relative to the serene and
undisturbed existence led by murderers and desperadoes in the said
captain's territory.

The captain turned the colour of brick dust under his tan, and
forwarded the letter, after adding a few comments, per ranger Private
Bill Adamson, to ranger Lieutenant Sandridge, camped at a water hole
on the Nueces with a squad of five men in preservation of law and
order.

Lieutenant Sandridge turned a beautiful /couleur de rose/ through his
ordinary strawberry complexion, tucked the letter in his hip pocket,
and chewed off the ends of his gamboge moustache.

The next morning he saddled his horse and rode alone to the Mexican
settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, twenty miles away.

Six feet two, blond as a Viking, quiet as a deacon, dangerous as a
machine gun, Sandridge moved among the /Jacales/, patiently seeking
news of the Cisco Kid.

Far more than the law, the Mexicans dreaded the cold and certain
vengeance of the lone rider that the ranger sought. It had been one of
the Kid's pastimes to shoot Mexicans "to see them kick": if he
demanded from them moribund Terpsichorean feats, simply that he might
be entertained, what terrible and extreme penalties would be certain
to follow should they anger him! One and all they lounged with
upturned palms and shrugging shoulders, filling the air with "/quien
sabes/" and denials of the Kid's acquaintance.

But there was a man named Fink who kept a store at the Crossing--a man
of many nationalities, tongues, interests, and ways of thinking.

"No use to ask them Mexicans," he said to Sandridge. "They're afraid
to tell. This /hombre/ they call the Kid--Goodall is his name, ain't
it?--he's been in my store once or twice. I have an idea you might run
across him at--but I guess I don't keer to say, myself. I'm two
seconds