Tom Outland's Story
with him, chartered a freight car, and travelled in
the car with it. I reckon it's on the water by now.
He took it straight through into Old Mexico, and
was to load it on a French boat. Seems he was
afraid of having trouble getting curiosities out of
the United States ports. You know you can take
anything out of the City of Mexico."
I had heard all I wanted to hear. I went to the hotel, got a room, and lay down without undressing to wait for daylight. Hook was to drive me and my trunk out to the mesa early the next morning. All I'd been through in Washington was nothing to what I went through that night. I thought Blake must have lost his mind. I didn't for a minute believe he'd meant to sell me out, but I cursed his stupidity and presumption. I had never told him just how I felt about those things we'd dug out together, it was the kind of thing one doesn't talk about directly. But he must have known; he couldn't have lived with me all summer and fall without knowing. And yet, until that night, I had never known myself that I cared more about them than about anything else in the world.
At the first blink of daylight I jumped up from my damnable bed and went round to the stable to rout Hook out of his bunk. We had breakfast On the and got out of town with his best team. way to the mesa we had a break-down, one of the old dry wheels smashed to splinters. Hook had to
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