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Updated: May 2, 2025
What can you tell me about that?" Dave Darrin gave a brief account of the doings of the night before, though he did not mention the fact that he, himself, was in command of the landing party of rescuers. "It was a plucky bit of work," commented the consul. "Will that fight with Cosetta inflame the Mexican mind?" Dave asked.
Bringing his heels together, straightening up, he saluted: "Sir, I have the honor to report that, while on the air flight, I noted the location of a solitary adobe house about four miles out. From that house came two men whom I distinctly recognized through my field glass to be Lieutenant Cantor and the bandit, Cosetta.
"A prisoner?" cried Trent, in an undertone. "I have reason to believe that he isn't a prisoner," Dave went on. "The house is the same from which I saw Cosetta peer yesterday, and I have reason to think that Lieutenant Cantor and the bandit are on fairly good terms." "Be careful what you say, Darrin," cautioned Lieutenant Trent.
"Darrin," snarled Cantor, "this is all your doing!" "Some of it, sir," Dave admitted, cheerfully. "I heard you and another man talking in here, and I sent for Lieutenant Trent. As it happens, I know this to be the home, or the hanging-out place of Cosetta, and as I heard you talking just inside the door, I reported that fact to Lieutenant Trent."
"Here is a packet of communications for your captain," said the consul, handing a bulky envelope to Darrin. "One of the communications enclosed, Mr. Darrin, is of so important a nature that you will have an added reason for keeping your weather eye open against any form of trouble that Senor Cosetta might start for you in the streets."
Do you know anything about this fellow, Cosetta, Mr. Darrin?" "I never heard of him before yesterday," Dave confessed. "He is a troublesome fellow, and rather dangerous. More than once he has extorted large sums of ransom money for prisoners. He has a large following, even here in Vera Cruz, where he maintains his little force of spies and assassins.
Yet the traitor was hardly a whit behind him in rising. Crouching low, with the knife in his hand, Cantor watched his chance to spring. Ensign Dave's revolver lay on the ground. To take the second needed to recover the weapon would cost him his life at the point of the knife. Cosetta, lying desperately wounded, tried to crawl over the ground a few feet in order to reach his own pistol.
Perhaps he is now in town on that errand." "I have an idea that the fellow is dangerous," Darrin nodded. "Still, here in Vera Cruz, with scores of American sailors usually in sight on the streets, it seems to me hardly likely that Cosetta would instruct his men to attack me. The sailors would interfere. Certainly they would lay hold of the assassin."
Our landing party might be observed, and the news of the attempt at rescue would be signaled by fires or otherwise, and the discovery of our designs would undoubtedly result in the Carmody party being butchered at once. "Acting under the orders of Cosetta, or, I might say, under his threats, Mr.
"We have twenty men to the nine we saw in that house," Dave smiled. "Surely they will not endeavor to attack us." "Cosetta, the bandit, was he to whom you spoke in the house," replied John Carmody. "He has but a few men in the house, but there are twenty or thirty more sleeping in the stables behind the house. Altogether, unless he has sent some away, he must have more than sixty men hereabouts."
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