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for askin’ for a bribe, which me and you know is about as good as pissin’ in the alley down here. But what it done was make that official damn mad. So he ups and tells the police that Norris has done threatened his life.”
    “Oh, shit!” I said. It was looking worse and worse.
    Jack said, “It might have still been all right. They sent a captain of police and a couple of federales around to the hotel. I happened to be in the room when they come in and I tried to grease the captain on the sly, but Norris wasn’t having any of it. He said he was a United States citizen trying to protect his property from a bunch of goddam thieves and he was damned if he’d be arrested for something he hadn’t done.”
    “I bet that impressed the hell out of them,” I said.
    Jack smiled. “Naw, they got impressed when the captain laid hands on Norris. Norris busted him square in the mouth. Knocked the shit out of him.”
    Ben laughed, but Hays and I sort of groaned. I said, “What’s the rest of it?”
    Jack shook his head. “I dunno. When I left Monterrey they hadn’t made no formal charges, but last I seen of him, he was still giving them trouble. Justa, I’m sorry, wadn’t a damn thing I could do.”
    “I know,” I said.
    “Fact of the business was, it cost me fifty dollars not to git arrested myself. I figured the best thing I could do was get on back to Laredo and git off a wire and wait for help.”
    “You done right,” I said. “And you won’t be the loser for it. What’s the earliest train we can get out on in the morning?”
    “Eight.”
    “What you reckon it’s going to cost to square matters?”
    Jack shook his head. “I ain’t got no idea, Justa. Them Mexican police don’t take too kindly to havin’ no gringo punch ’em. I ain’t even sure it can be squared with money.”
    “You’ll go with us? I’ll make it worth your while.”
    “Oh, sure. An’ you ain’t got to pay me. Yore family has done me more than one favor I ain’t forgot.”
    I got up. “It’s past midnight. I reckon we ought to all get some rest. Jack, we’ll be taking our horses. How about you?”
    That sort of raised his eyebrows. But he said, “Well, long’s you is gonna go ahead and pay fer a horse box, I might as well take my old nag along.”
    I said, “We’ll see you at the depot a little after seven. And I’m much obliged to you.”
    He shrugged. “Nothin’ you wouldn’t have done fer me.”
    Before we went to bed, Ben took occasion to lift my spirits by saying, “I reckon you’re pretty relieved Nora don’t know how much trouble you got on your hands or how long it’s going to take to fix it.”
    I looked at him. I said, “Ben, one of these days that mouth of yours is going to get filled up. With my fist.”
    He laughed. “Big brother is worried. Listen, I’ll protect you from Nora.”
    “Oh, shut up. We got work ahead.”
    We loaded up on the Texas side of the river. The train wasn’t too crowded until we got into the station in Nuevo Laredo. Then it got swarmed on and over and in by so many peons carrying crates of chickens and leading goats that we all elected to go back and ride in the horse car we’d paid for.
    It was about a hundred miles to Monterrey, but because we would stop at every village along the way, the trip would take at least four hours. The train was so overloaded that they had to put sand on the rails so the locomotive wheels could take a grip. Sitting, waiting, it seemed to be even hotter than it had been back in our part of the country. But once the train got moving, the breeze blowing through the opened side doors was a welcome relief. I’d got the hotel kitchen to put us up some roast beef and cheese and bread, and about midmorning we brought out the grub and had a feed. Jack had a bottle of tequila and we had the remains of the two bottles we’d bought the night before.
    Jack finally said, “Justa, how come you’re bringing horses? You figuring you might need to leave in a