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 husk diet? What’s the trouble? Don’t you get your filial eyes on anything that looks like cash in the Casa Blanca? Don’t tell me you don’t. Everybody knows where old Urique keeps his stuff. It’s U. S. currency, too; he don’t accept anything else. What’s doing? Don’t say ‘nothing’ this time.”

“Why, sure,” said the Kid, admiring his diamond, ‘there’s plenty of money up there. I’m no judge of collateral in bunches, but I will undertake for to say that I’ve seen the rise of $50,000 at a time in that tin grub box that my adopted father calls his safe. And he lets me carry the key sometimes just to show me that he knows I’m the real little Francisco that strayed from the herd a long time ago.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?” asked Thacker angrily. “Don’t you forget that I can upset your applecart any day I want to. If old Urique knew you were an impostor, what sort of things would happen to you? Oh, you don’t know this country, Mr. Texas Kid. The laws here have got mustard spread between ’em. These people here’d stretch you out like a frog that had been stepped on, and give you about fifty sticks at every corner of the plaza. And they’d wear every stick out, too. What was left of you they’d feed to alligators.”

“I might as well tell you now, pardner,” said the Kid, sliding down low on his steamer chair, “that things are going to stay just as they are. They’re about right now.”

“What do you mean?” asked Thacker, rattling the bottom of his glass on his desk.