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 with precautions for secrecy. With these preliminaries, he announces that the six guys we met at dinner is his deadly enemies! I'll give you his story like he gives it to us.

It seems that when Pancho Nogales was in power in Sonora durin' his revolutionary days, these six jobbies, composin' a oil syndicate, had double-crossed him. He thought their word was as good as their bond. It was—but their bond was worthless. Accordin' to Pancho, they got some valuable concessions from him, gypped him out of the jack they was supposed to pay for them, and, not content with that deviltry, they went to work and led him into a trap so's the Government army could capture him. Well, it's a hobby of Pancho's not to let nobady give him a pushin' around like that and get away with it, even if he's no longer a dictator, and for years he's schemed and plotted for revenge. Fin'ly, says Pancho, Lady Luck smiled on him with the results that he got these six scissor-bills together at his hacienda, makin' 'em think he'd decided to let bygones be bygones. How he pulled off that seemin'ly impossible stunt and just how he's goin' to bear down on these birds, Pancho says he will explain fully the next day.

"You are going to kill them?" gasps Kid Roberts, in alarm.

"Ah, no, señor," smiles Pancho, rubbin' his hands together, "I have done with killings. I have passed my word to my Government, and I am a gentleman. Had I these dogs in my hands ten years ago—well, a firing squad in the patio and poof—it is done! No.