"Hell!--I guess this neck of the woods knows Anthony Habert, and you can
bank on it that it's never located his yellow streak. Sure, in the
pinch, I'd spit on Old Glory. What the hell d'ye think I'm going on the
streets for a night like this? Didn't I skin out of the Southern Hotel
half an hour ago, where there are forty buck Americans, not counting
their women, and all armed? That was safety. What d'ye think I came here
for?--to rescue you?"

His indignation lumped his throat into silence, and he seemed shaken as
with an apoplexy.

"Spit it out," Davies commanded dryly.

"I'll tell you," Habert exploded. "It's Billy Boy. Fifty miles up
country and twenty-thousand throat-cutting federals and rebels between
him and me. D'ye know what that boy'd do, if he was here in Tampico and
I was fifty miles up the Panuco? Well, I know. And I'm going to do the
same--go and get him."

"We're figuring on going up," Wemple assured him.

"And that's why I headed here--Miss Drexel, of course?"

Both men acquiesced and smiled. It was a time when men dared speak of
matters which at other times tabooed speech.

"Then the thing's to get started," Habert exclaimed, looking at his
watch. "It's midnight now. We've got to get to the river and get a
boat--"