"Why, Lieutenant, do you feel that we should have turned a deadly enemy loose ?" "But you had no right to arrest him, senor." "Nor did we arrest him in the sense that you mean, Lieutenant.
All we did was to render Gato helpless and bring him along with us until we should have passed out of the bit of country in which he might have been dangerous to our safety." "How could he be dangerous when you had his weapon ?" the lieutenant demanded, argumentatively.
"Why, he had other men out with him.

How long would it have taken Gato to find his men and bring them down upon us--three or four guns against one ?" "But did you see his other men at any time in the night ?" "No," Tom admitted.
"Senor, you have made a grave mistake in arresting and holding the man, Gato.

You had no right to do so." "Why, in our own country," Tom protested, "any one may arrest a man who is committing a crime.

In our own case we very likely would have lost our lives to bandits if we had not tied Gato and brought him with us." "Had you tied him and left him behind it might have been different," explained the lieutenant.

"But what you did, Senor Reade, was to make an actual arrest, and this you, as an American, had no right to do.