"What's the matter?" inquired Kruger, set back by the abrupt refusal. "Scared?"
"Yes, I'm scared," admitted Bud, and he challenged the old man with his eyes.
"Well, you might call it that," agreed Bud. "We been on the dodge for a month. A bunch of _revoltosos_ tried to get our treasure, and when we skipped out on 'em they tried to get us."
"Well," continued Kruger, "this proposition of mine is different. You was over in the Sierra Madres, where the natives are bad. These Sonora Mexicans ain't like them Chihuahua fellers--they're Americanized. I'll tell you, if it wasn't that the people would know me I'd go down after this mine myself. The country's perfectly quiet. There's lots of Americans down there yet, and they don't even know there _is_ a revolution. It ain't far from the railroad, you see, and that makes a lot of difference."
He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper as he revealed the approximate locality of his bonanza, but Bud remained unimpressed.
"Yes," he said, "_we_ was near a railroad--the Northwestern--and seemed like them red-flaggers did nothing else but burn bridges and ditch supply trains. When they finally whipped 'em off the whole bunch took to the hills. That's where we got it again."
"Well," argued Kruger, "this railroad of ours is all right, and they run a train over it every day. The concentrator at Fortuna"--he lowered his voice again--"hasn't been shut down a day, and you'll be within fifteen miles of that town. No," he whispered; "I could get a hundred Americans to go in on this to-morrow, as far's the revolution's concerned. It ain't dangerous, but I want somebody I can trust."
"Nope," pronounced Bud, rising ponderously to his feet; "if it was this side the line I'd stay with you till the hair slipped, on anything, but--"
"Well, let's talk it over again some time," urged Kruger, following him along out. "It ain't often I git took with a young feller the way I was with you, and I believe we can make it yet. Where are you staying in town?"
"Up at the Cochise," said Bud. "Come on with me--I told my pardner I'd meet him there."
They turned up the broad main street and passed in through the polished stone portals of the Cochise, a hotel so spacious in its interior and so richly appointed in its furnishings that a New Yorker, waking up there, might easily imagine himself on Fifth Avenue.