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Show By George Agnew Chamberlain - - 9T CHAPTER IX 10 Helm Blackadder wa3 already closeted with the ambassador who opened the interview by handing over a resume, written in his own hand, of the situation to date. "There you are, Mr. Blackadder, and I don't mind saying Miss Sew-ell's Sew-ell's escapade has managed to put the United States government, as represented by my unfortunate self, in a nasty hole. You asked us for assistance; I now return the compliment com-pliment by calling upon you to help me out." "How?" asked Blackadder. "That's the very question I was going to put to you," he said. "You have all the facts. What do you suggest?" "Find me a car and a man who knows the way to La Barranca. Once I get in there I'll guarantee to bring the girl out." "On what grounds do you intend to base your action?" "She's a minor and authority has been delegated to me by her legal guardian," said Blackadder as though he were reciting a lesson. "You're sure she's under age?" interpolated the ambassador anxiously. anx-iously. "You probably know the laws of the state of New York better than I do. A girl becomes of age at eighteen for certain purposes and at twenty-one for others. I'm willing will-ing to risk an assumption." "Good enough," said the ambassador ambas-sador with a nod. "I can't offer you an embassy car, but I'll have the town searched at once for a good one owned by somebody well acquainted ac-quainted with the roads and the location lo-cation of the hacienda. When could you start?" "At dawn tomorrow," said Black-adder. Black-adder. "I'd go tonight but I doubl if we'd gain much time and it won 1 do me any harm to get some sleep.' Hp named his hotel and left the embassy at the exact moment Ar-naldo, Ar-naldo, half across the city, was being be-ing shown into the private study of the minister of war. "Adan, my friend!" exclaimed the minister, holding out both hands. Arnaldo dodged the embrace but grinned, showing a gleam of white teeth. "How much is it going to cost me?" he asked. "From the welcome I'll bet it runs into thousands." thou-sands." "You've guessed it," said the minister, min-ister, "but the wrong way round. Thousands for you." "I can't believe it! Spread the map." ' "Sit down and I will. It's a matter mat-ter of buying off a young girl at anything up to $50,000. You might talk her into signing for 30, 20, or 10. With your tongue and looks you might get her to do it for nothing. However you manage it the balance is yours, and no questions asked." Adan turned his head in a peculiar pe-culiar gesture of alertness. "Who's the girl? What's her name?" "She's a young American, Mees Joize Sewell." Arnaldo threw out his hands and rose. "You're too late too late by a lot of hours." "Why? What do you know about it?" "She went to La Barranca a cou- j T-T lnnff would it pie ui uuys 06. w. ."..0 take Dorado to cook her goose? Figure it out for yourself." "Dorado!" gasped the minister, stifling a laugh. "Apparently you haven't read this morning's papers." pa-pers." He thrust forward the same newspaper clipping he had shown the ambassador. "Cast your eye over that." Arnaldo read the single paragraph, para-graph, his expression changing at almost every line. When he reached the end he burst into a roar ol laughter. "Pepe, of all people! Pope!" "You think it's funny?" said the minister. "Funny? It's so funny I'm goint to have sore ribs for the rest o; my life " He folded the clipping am put it in his wallet. "And Marga rida Fonscca told me the girl hac. gone to plead with him-to throw herself on his mercy!" "Margarida Fonscca!" cried tin minister, suddenly going tense a no leaning forward. "Sure, and what of it? The minister sank back. Tin plot gets thicker." he cspla.ned. and when I say plot I mean plot. But I becin to see the light and by ft he linger of Onelia. The l.me has come for you to declare yourself. your-self. Which are you for-him or "'You" said Adan promptly; -Now tell me what it's all about. Alter ten minutes' talk the mm- P.?. minis'efof war and with the consent of my government I guar anteethe payment of an amount no tn exceed $50,000 in case the seno S,a Joyce Sewell "' o Cutler Sewell. s.gns a t0 the Pr-Perno .. L. B ranca and leacs me d rrledewlth"pardon.ble pride. "You notice the simple wording? Whoever brings in the quitclaim together with this order gets the money." "Provided the girl has left Mexico." Mex-ico." "Yes, yes; of course. We don't care to have the job of expelling her, but once she's across the border bor-der we'll undertake to see she doesn't come back. What about it, Adan? Doesn't it look like easy money?" "On the face of it," said Arnaldo slowly, "it does too easy. Where's the catch?" "For a man like you and with your resources," said the minister, "there's no catch whatever. There can't be. What's your answer? Will you take it on or not?" Adan stood staring at the paper in his hand without seeing it. "I'll go," he declared finally. They shook hands and he started out but before he reached the door the telephone rang with such insistency in-sistency he paused. A moment later lat-er the minister was holding up his 1 "I See," Said Blackadder, Frowning Thoughtfully. hand, ordering him to wait. The conversation began with "Yes, Excellency," Ex-cellency," and ended with the same phrase. He relinquished the apparatus appa-ratus and sat back. "Well, Adan, you have a rival. The ambassador is sending his own emissary, a compatriot with the strange name of Blackadder." "Good," said Adan. "Blackadder it sounds like a snake. Then that let's me out." "On the contrary; it doubles the importance of your mission. My thinking of you was a stroke of genius, because the more gringos get mixed in this business the worse it is for us. Besides, I feel the ambassador's choice hasn't a chance of success." "By the way," Arnaldo said suddenly, sud-denly, "what do I get out of it?" "I told you!" gasped the minister. "Isn't fifty thousand' enough?" "That's for the girl," said Arnal do coolly. "If I lick Onelia, save your neck, attend to Dorado and keep a couple of countries out of war it's going to cost you fifty thousand thou-sand more. Is it agreed?" "I suppose so," said the minister after a long pause. "Do you want me to put it in writing?" "Why should you?" asked Arnaldo Arnal-do with a thin gleam of shining teeth. "Once I've heard it you and I know your word is as good as your oond once I've heard it." He departed. Arnaldo knew vhen to rush at a job and when to take it easy. He got away around seven in the morning, morn-ing, curled up in the back scat and disposed himself for slumber. Juan-ito, Juan-ito, his daredevil driver, knew little if speed under 60 miles an hour, consequently Adan's nap ended violently vio-lently a little after eight o'clock, for a moment he thought it was an earthquake, then realized it was .yierelv the difference between the road before and after Toluca. Ke climbed into the front seat and pres-..ntlv pres-..ntlv was dangling from the over--end struts as Joyce-had done. As thev rounded a low butle the I white blo't of La Barranca burst into view vet neither of them saw it. ( Instinctively Juanito slowed even . before Adan could tap his wr.st. Directlv before them, possibly a little lit-tle over halfway to the distant hacienda, haci-enda, a troop of horsemen was swirling in contracting circles around a slowly moving car. -Back im." ordered Arnaldo. -and hide her. Stick her nose against the hill." juanito obeyed. A moment later thev were climbm.fi the mound which was crowned by a growth of three kinds of cacti, one of tr.em a tower.ng and many-branched sample sam-ple of the giant torch variety. Tr.e horsemen, having brcucht the car to a halt, had gathered in a group ahead of it. Now a thick-set man stepped out of its tonneau and 1 walked directly toward them. Scarcely had he left the car than its driver raced it backward into a Y turn, reversed his gears and presently pres-ently was shooting at top speed across . the plain with his recent employer in a direct line between him and the bandits. "For once a coward saves his master's life," murmured Arnaldo. "I don't get it," said Juanito. "The man you see down yonder is a gringo named Blackadder. Dorado Do-rado and his men would have filled him full of holes if his louse of a driver hadn't created a diversion." "Dorado!" breathed Juanito in an ewed whisper. Blackadder was scarcely conscious con-scious of his driver's treachery, so absorbed was his attention by the gaping muzzles of two double-action forty-fives and the man who held them. Experience in many tough spots of the world, notably mining camps and the diamond fields of Lencoes, had taught him a gun at the level of the hip invariably means business. Besides, Dorado's pear-shaped face presented such a vivid incarnation of brutality as to arouse doubt as to whether the six-shooters six-shooters might not in the long run turn out to be angels of mercy, instinctively in-stinctively Helm, raised both hands and kept them high. Without appearing ap-pearing to move a muscle Dorado sent a searing bullet between the spread fingers of one of them. "Put 'em down," he ordered in guttural English, then murmured instructions to two of his followers. They dismounted, frisked Black-adder Black-adder for arms, seized him by feet and wrists, swung him into the saddle sad-dle of one of their horses and trussed his ankles beneath its barrel so tightly he winced at the pain. He started to protest in Spanish but caught his tongue in time. Both man rYidimloH tli a vmnininfJ ridpr- leSS horse and the cavalcade was off. Dorado rode at its head at a mile-eating hand gallop and the rest followed, closely bunched around the prisoner. The barranca was narrowing steadily. Three abandoned drifts gaped in the walls of the chasm, two on the southern, one on the northern side, and along the stream for a distance of a hundred yards men could be seen busily sloshing wooden bateas for placer gold. With a muttered order Dorado dismounted dismount-ed and passed into the recesses of the largest of the cave-like openings. open-ings. In a moment every rider had unsaddled and the freed horses were driven helter-skelter upstream into a cliff-locked corral. The nearest man to Blackadder drew his sheath knife and slashed the taut thong connecting his ankles. Either by accident or on purpose the knife severed the girth and gashed the pony's hide as well. The horse leaped in air, hurling rider and saddle to the ground. There was a roar of laughter. Finding himself unable to rise Blackadder started to crawl on hands and knees to the brook, intending to bathe his lacerated and half-paralyzed legs in the cooling water. At each slosh of the icy water his fury rose, restoring his courage and determination to more than their normal level. Leaning far over he extracted passport and wallet from his breast pocket and managed to thrust them under a flat stone. Presently Pres-ently Dorado called to him not loudly, but the funnel of the drift acted like a megaphone. "Come here, cabron." Blackadder found he could barely walk. He approached, entered and at a gesture from Dorado sank on a truss of hay with his back against the wall. Instantly his long training train-ing as a miner set his senses alert. He deduced the fact that there must be a shaft, small or large, some where in the rear of the cave. Blackadder's nostrils informed him such was the case, not by reason of any odor but because of an indescribable inde-scribable thinness in the air. Dorado Do-rado straddled a camp stooL "You spik Castellano?" he asked. "No," lied Blackadder. "What is your name?" "Henry Gilfalcon." "Henrique, hein? You gringo-Americano?" gringo-Americano?" "No, I'm British," said Blackadder, Blackad-der, but instantly regretted the falsehood, for at the sudden hardening harden-ing of Dorado's luminous eyes he realized it had not gone over. "I think perhaps you lie," said Dorado softly. "When I know you lie I send a finger to the American ambassador one finger each week. How much money you got?" "I did lie," said Blackadder, "and I'm sorry. I'm an American, but all my money everything I had in the world was in my dispatch case in that car." "No money, eh? Perhaps pretty , soon somebody want to buy you for 25,000 pesos. Better write letter while you have enough fingers. You write letter any time you like; I read it. You say send money to General Dorado, Mexico City." "I. see," said Blackadder, frowning frown-ing thoughtfully. Something was stirring in his brain a seed, an acorn that developed de-veloped in a flash to the size of a full-grown oak. Roughly it could be framed in a single question. Why not substitute La Barranca for the ransom of 25,000 pesos and thus kill four birds with one stone? In spite of exhaustion he could not sleep, tortured by the aching of his swollen ankles, but toward dawn fell into a doze. It proved a misfortune, mis-fortune, since by the time he was roused Dorado and his riders had already departed on their daily foray, but the guards remained. The . dav nrnved unlucky for Dorado as well. At nightfall, wafted along within a blue cloud of blasphemy, he was carried in on an improvised litter and laid on his cot; the bullet that had pierced his thigh had killed his horse. CHAPTER X Arnaldo had stayed crouched beside be-side the trunk of the cactus much longer than ordinary caution required, re-quired, thinking and thinking hard. A. full hour elapsed before he led the way back to the car and ordered Juanito to proceed. Juanito never missed a chance to make speed and as the trail frequently fre-quently forked this way and that, dodging the mudholes of the recent rainy season, he was forced to come to some quick decisions. Such a choice now presented itself. The fork to the left was undoubtedly the main road but the wheel marks to the right seemed fresher. He chose the former, yielding instinctively to the pull of memory, for he had driven this way once before. Recollection Rec-ollection told him there would be a short bridge, relic of more prosperous prosper-ous limes. But there was no bridge; it had been carried away in the last floods. He jammed down both feet, reached for the emergency brake and brought the car to a halt on the very lip of an arroyo fully 12 feet deep and twice as wide. -Numskull!" growled Arnaldo. "Jump, imbecil!" Slowly the car was nosing down and .but for the emergency brake would have glided forward and then rushed. Arnaldo on one side and Juanito on the other scrambled up from the bank just in time to cross a steadily widening fissure. The push of their feet was the last straw; a great block of earth gave way with a dull rumble. The car made a nose dive, bounced and fell on its back, its four wheels in air. (to nr. com im i i |