"But you will not find your enemies out here to-night, Senor Gato,"

softly remarked one of the quartette around the fire.

"No," admitted Gato, in a growling voice.

"Then why are we waiting here?"

"Because it pleases me," snapped the big fellow. "What ails you?

Am I not paying you?"

"But two of us--and I am one of them--do not like to be seen,"

rejoined the speaker at the fire. "The troops hunt us. There is a price on our heads."

"Bandits!" muttered Tom Reade, under his breath, as he drew back.

"I have heard that Mexico is overrun with bandits. These gentlemen are some of the fraternity."

"Take us up to the house, Gato," urged one of the men at the fire.

"We shall know how to enter and find your friends. Everyone sleeps there. It will be the safer way."

"It does not suit me," retorted Gato, sullenly.

"But why not?"

"Am I not paying you?"

"Yes."

"Then take my orders and do not ask questions."

At this there were sounds of dissatisfaction from all four of these bad men.

"For one thing," Gato explained, "Don Luis would not like it. He would accuse me of treachery--or worse. I do not want Don Luis's ill will, you see."

"But Don Luis will be angry, in any case, if you injure his engineers, won't he?" asked one of the men.

"A little, but after a while, Don Luis will not care what I do to the Americanos," growled Pedro Gato.

"Humph! That's interesting--if true," whispered Tom Reade.

"Yet what are we doing here?" insisted one of the men. "Here, so close to where the troops might pick us up?"

"You are obeying orders," snarled Gato.

"But that information is not quite enough to suit us," objected one of the Mexicans.

"You might go your own way, then," sneered Gato. "I can find other men who are not so curious. However, I will say that, when daylight comes, we will hide not far from here. None of you know the Americanos by sight. I will point them out to you as they pa.s.s by in the daylight."

"And then--what?" pressed one of the rough men. "Are we to kill the Americanos from ambush?"

"Eh?" gasped Tom Reade, with a start.

"If you have to," nodded Pedro Gato. "Though, in that case, I shall call you clumsy. I shall pay you just four times as much if you bring them to me as prisoners. Remember that. Before I despatch these infernal Gringos I shall want the fun of tormenting them."

"Oh, you will eh?" thought Tom, with a slight shudder.

"I heard, Gato," ventured one of the Mexicans, incautiously, "that one of the Americanos beat you fearfully--that he threw you down and stamped on you."

"It is a lie!" uttered Gato, leaping to his feet, his face distorted with rage. "It is a lie, I tell you. The man does not live who can beat me in a fight."

"I was struck with amazement at the tale," admitted the Mexican who had brought about this outburst.

"And well you might be," continued Gato, savagely. "But the Americanos procured my discharge. And that was humiliation enough."

"Yet what difference does it make, Gato. As soon as Don Luis is through with the Americanos he will restore you to your old position."

"It is because the Americanos treated me with such contempt,"

retorted Pedro. "No man sneers at me and lives."

"You unhung bandit!" muttered Tom under his breath. "Why don't you tell your bandit friends that you are angry because of the trouncing I gave you before a lot of men? But I suppose you hate to lose caste, even before such ragged specimens as your friends."

Suddenly one of the men around the fire s.n.a.t.c.hed at his rifle.

Next scattering the embers of the fire, the fellow threw himself down flat, peering down the road.

"The troops are coming," he whispered. "I hear their horses."

"The horses that you hear are mules," laughed Gato, harshly.

"It is the nightly transport of ore down to _El Sombrero_. Just now Don Luis is having fine ore brought over the hills from another mine and dumped into _El Sombrero_."

"Why should he bring ore from another mine to _El Sombrero_?"

asked one of the men, curiously.

"How should I know?" demanded Gato, shrugging his shoulders and spitting on the ground. "Why should I concern myself with the business that belongs to an hidalgo like Don Luis?"

"It is queer that--"

"Silence!" hissed Gato. "Do not meddle with the secrets of Don Luis Montez, or you will be sorry for it."

Gato's explanation about the mule-train had quieted the fears of the bandits as to the approach of troops. In some mountainous parts of Mexico the government's troops are nearly always on the trail of bandits and the petty warfare is a brisk one.

"Go to sleep, my friends. There will be nothing to do until day comes."

"Then, good Gato, take us somewhere off this road," pleaded one of the men. "It is too public here to be to our liking."

"You may go to a quieter place," nodded Gato. "You know where--the place I showed you this afternoon. As for me, after the mule-train has left the mine, I must go there. I will join you before daybreak."

"We'll go now, then," muttered one of the men, rising.

They were coming up the road in the direction of the young engineers.

There was no time to retreat. Tom glanced swiftly around. Then he made a sign to Harry. Both young engineers flattened themselves out behind a pile of stones at the roadside. Their biding-place was far from being a safe one. But four drowsy bandits plodded by without espying the eavesdroppers. As for Nicolas, he had vanished like the mist before the sun.