Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/242

228 to use him differently from the beginning, I am sure. Only he worked on his hatred against you. Padilla himself helped to give the thing away. Like all Mexicans, he had to boast. So he came to me and told me that he was going to kill the gringo who had come between him and me. Castro—" she hesitated—"Castro had a fancy for me. I had always held him off, but—I had to find out—to warn you—and so I let him think that I was not altogether indifferent."

She stopped and looked at him half pleadingly and Stone put his hand on top of hers. She let it stay there.

"I could always handle him when—when he tried to go too far. He used to get pretty drunk toward morning and I would make Pisco punches for him. They unlocked his tongue. I flattered his vanity and he has lots of it, for all his ugly fatness. Like Padilla, he loves to boast, but he is shrewder. But I thought I would never get it out of him. And all the time Padilla was on the way. It it had not been for the Apaches and Healy getting wounded I should have been too late. But I got it little by little until, at last, one night he began to brag. It seems he had been jealous—of you—and I had to get that out of his mind.

"He knew all about your trip from the first. He knew of the find of Dave Sims and Lem Burden and a partner of theirs years ago. He grubstaked both of them but they didn't come back."

Stone nodded, remembering Harvey's talk.