“Yes, I’ve prospered. I’m worth a good deal of money. It was one of my interests brought me to Mexico; I own more than half of the Buena Ventura Mine, there in the hills back of where you saw me get on the train. I had to come up to look it over and when I thought that I was only a few hundred miles from San Antonio--well, the thing pulled me. I just had to come. Why, I didn’t even know whether my girl was alive or dead. And I wanted to know. For one thing, if she was living I wanted to fix it so she’d get my property when I pass out. And I couldn’t write to anybody, of course, not without making talk.” “Been going straight all this time, eh?” Carmichael was still groping. “I never was anything else,” the man protested. “You never heard anything against me outside of that last killing, did you? And you never heard the truth of that. Nobody did.” “I don’t remember all the details,” the Ranger said. “It’s a long time.” “I was railroaded,” the man declared earnestly. “You may not believe it--convicts always say they were railroaded. But I was. The evidence was all against me. I didn’t have a chance. But as true as there’s a God in heaven I never killed a man that wasn’t trying to kill me. Not one of them. Everybody had to admit that until the last one. They got me that time without a friendly witness. “Of course anything I say isn’t going to have any weight, after all this time. The records of the court show for themselves. But it’s a relief, somehow, to talk about it. The biggest thing in a man’s life and I’ve had to be dumb for twenty-two years! Twenty-two years without a word from home--although after a while it stopped seeming like home. Buenos Aires is my home now. People down there don’t think badly of me at all. If it wasn’t for the girl--and yet, until I got into Mexico there, so close to Texas, I never really intended to look her up in person. You see, I didn’t even know whether or not she’d lived.” “So you said. Tell me about that killing. The straight of it.” The man had quite recovered from the effects of his blow, except that an ugly lump was raising itself above his ear, which from time to time he patted softly. “That feud between John Gater and me,” he said, “dated back a long time. He was the boss of Huevaca County in those days, of course, and I was a sort of leader of the faction that was trying to pull him off his throne and get halfway decent government. Sheriff Aristo Coyne was his man, and all Coyne’s deputies. And he was in with the Sarran gang.” “A fine bunch of desperadoes and horse thieves,” Carmichael murmured. “And Dick Sarran, the head of them, was a dirty killer, but nobody could do anything to him because Gater stood behind him. And Gater was above all the law there was in Huevaca County.” “He was a powerful boss.” “And I fought him, like a young fool. I was about twenty-five. I’m only forty-nine now. This white hair----