A vision of himself trying to barter his mail-order package for a kiss flashed up before Pecos in lines of fire, but he shut his lips and sat silent. The exaltation and shame of that moment came back to him in a mighty pang of sorrow and he bowed his head on his arms. What if, in the fury of drink and passion, he had offered some insult to his Señorita—the girl who had crept unbeknown into his rough life and filled it with her smile! No further memory of that black night was seared into his clouded brain—the vision ended with the presentation of the package. What followed was confined only to the limitations of man's brutal whims. For a minute Pecos contemplated this wreck of all his hopes—then, from the abyss of his despair there rose a voice that cried for revenge. Revenge for his muddled brain, for the passion which came with drink: revenge for his girl, whom he had lost by some foolish drunken freak! He leapt to his feet in a fury. "It's that dastard, Crit!" he cried, shaking his fists in the air. "He sold us his cussed whiskey—he sent us on our way! And now I'm goin' to git him!" Angy gazed up at him questioningly and then raised a restraining hand. "It's more than him, Cumrad," he said solemnly. "More than him! If Crit should die to-morrow the system would raise up another robber to take his place. It's the System, Pecos, the System—this here awful conspiracy of the capitalistic classes and the servile officers of the law—that keeps the poor man down. Worse, aye, worse than the Demon Rum, is the machinations which puts the power of government into the monopolistic hands of capital and bids the workingman earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. There is only one answer to the crime of government—the revolution!" "Well, let 'er go then," cried Pecos, impulsively. "The revolution she is until the last card falls—but all the same I got my eye on Crit!" CHAPTER IX DEATH AND TAXES