"Hola, mis Guardias Civiles! Jacinto Quesada--he is here!"

An answering shout spiraled up from the deeps of the gorge. Then, on the heels of it, one long slithering shaft of sound. The crang of a carbine!

Ferou threw up his arms and, his face black with congested blood, half spilled forward as if he had been struck by a blow between the shoulders. He swayed back and forth on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, caught himself, hung still for intolerable moments. Then, as is usually the case with a man killed by a bullet, he tottered backward, slipped on the crumbling lip of the rock and went over, clutching with white clawing hands at the brink, twisting, turning, and shrieking--shrieking for minutes afterward, shrieking hideously!

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Doctor Torreblanca Y Moncada strategically overcame the trouble engendered by cremation. He had the serranos burn whole trees and from the ashes, by percolation through water, produce a leaching of lye.

Then, a goodly distance from the water supply coursing through the old Moorish flume, on the lip of the gorge where a void had been left by the dismantling of the two infected cabanas, he had the men of the pueblo dig a deep pit. Therein he purposed burying the dead in sheets of the burning alkali.

On the morning following that on which poetic justice had come to Ferou, he approached Quesada, who was superintending the work of digging the pit. Save for a certain wolfish gauntness, the bandolero was almost himself.

"Jacinto," he said, "do you feel hardy enough, my haggard one, to journey down these hills to my casa near Granada?"

The Moorish oblong eyes of the bandolero showed surprise and a shade of fear.

"I am easily strong enough by now, Don Jaime. But--"

"Is it the police you fear? They rode away immediately after the killing of Ferou."

Quesada shook his head.

"I am frank with you, my hidalgo doctor. Should I absent myself from the barrio, I would fear for Felicidad of the gold hair and heart of fire!"

With his cold gray eyes, the grandee looked at Quesada and through and through him. As if mouthing some religious dogma, he returned haughtily:

"You know, son of a mangy she-wolf, that no man can halt a Torreblanca y Moncada once he says, I will! Ea pues! It is thus with my vengeance. The ancient name of my house, the blood of my veins, must be cleared of all tainture! Felicidad must die!"

"G.o.d preserve you, Don Jaime! You are still the soul of granite, unforgiving and unsparing even though your stolen money is all returned to you now, and your daughter's disgrace altogether wiped out by the death of the French poodle!"

The hidalgo laughed harshly. He refused in his lordly pride to argue.

Cleverly he countered:

"And you, Jacint.i.to; you are still the Wolf-Cub, ever leaping to the jade's defense as you did when you were only a bantling!

"But it is not because I wish to be rid of you that I ask you to journey," he went on. "You have reminded me that I am a priest of the body. It is of my profession I speak. I need medicines. The supply is nearly exhausted."

"But I carted up such a lot, fully four canvas packs!"

"I know. But mi gran espada Manuel and the Senor Carson, both well-meaning but untutored, made extravagant inroads on the treasures you brought. And hearing from old Tio Pedro that you had stocked yourself so well, I rode extra light to make speed."

"Yet things are going better now," objected Quesada. "There are fewer deaths and more recoveries."

"Thank G.o.d for that! But one can never tell. The present even tone of the weather may suddenly change and cause the scourge to redouble its havoc. I must not run short."

"That is true," nodded Quesada. Yet it was evident that he still hesitated to go for fear of leaving Felicidad una.s.sisted and helpless before the cold implacable wrath of her father.

Said Don Jaime, commencing to offer inducements, plainly weakening before the obstinacy of the bandolero:

"If you will go, Jacinto, you may take my horse. No other has ridden him in over ten years. He will carry you well, though only at a snail's pace."

Quesada realized what that offer meant.

"I will take the horse," he agreed. "That horse of yours shall be as a bond given in hand to me, Don Jaime, that you will remain here and stay your vengeance until I return!"

"My vengeance? Well, like the Judgment Day of Christ, that can wait!"

"Is it a promise?"

"It is a promise!"

"Vaya, Don Jaime!"

"Con Dios, Jacint.i.to!"

Garbed in the once elegant clothes of the dead Frenchman, even to his slouch traveling hat, Quesada sat deep in the doctor's saddle and carefully guided the old rawboned nag down the loops of the goat path.

He kept a wary eye out for the policemen. The Guardias Civiles might chance to be lingering on in the gorge. But the trampled s.p.a.ce about the alder tree was wholly deserted; the ashes from the breakfast fire of the day before were being rapidly dissipated by the draughty wind.

He pushed on down. Crackling over the fallen leaves in the gorges, clattering along the stony hogbacks and ridges, he came, in the waning afternoon, to the boulder-strewn pocket of the Christ of the Pa.s.s. And suddenly from below, louder than the ring of his horse's hoofs, there echoed up to him a sharp sound like the report of a pistol.

Come of long outlawry, Quesada was circ.u.mspectly cautious. The report might have exploded near at hand; the chances were that, with the odd carrying knack of sounds high on mountains, it had echoed, clear and distinct, from far away. But he would take no chances.

The ragged p.r.i.c.kly gorse and huge boulders, which bestrewed the pa.s.s about the foot of the cross, furnished unusual hiding places. He dismounted hastily, tied his horse behind a sumach bush and, behind a tall boulder, hid himself.

Twilight deepened quickly into full dark night. It was gruesome waiting there beneath the pale white figure of the Saviour, with its crown of black horsehair and red-painted wounds. Save for the wind sweeping through the pa.s.s with little shrill noises, nothing stirred or sounded in the long defile.

After a little, Quesada conquered his vague apprehensions sufficiently to sup upon the cold sausages, dry bread, and bota of wine which he had had the forethought to sling to the cantle of his saddle. Then it was on again, through the dark night and the savage uncouth pa.s.s, in haste to accomplish his errand for the doctor.

A piece of moon came up and shot long pale slithers of light down the rock walls. Ahead, in the sudden wan light, he made out the bent and bundled figure of an old, shawl-wrapped peasant woman. She was coming toward him up the gorge. She seemed making little catching sounds, as if softly weeping.

"A Dios, mother," he greeted, as he rode past.

She gave him neither answer nor notice. Her few wisps of white hair streaming in disarray from under her flat worsted cap, she went by, sobbing quietly, as if utterly oblivious of his presence.

Quesada looked after her bent form and shook his head commiseratingly.

"Ah, there has been some little domestic trouble in her cabana this night!" he remarked to himself. "And she is going on, the poor creature, to seek strength and consolation from the lonely Christ of the Pa.s.s. It is the way they have in these desolate hills--Hola! What's the matter, my bony Pegasus!"

The nag beneath him, suddenly shying, had come to a dead stop, and now was shivering in every limb. They had just rounded the bend which portaled the pa.s.s. Leaping afoot in the stirrups, Quesada gazed over the lifted frightened head of the horse. Ahead in the open road and shapeless in the vague moonlight, he saw something lying still and black!

Ever wary of ambush, resultant from long outlawry, he sprung out of the saddle and getting the horse by the bridle, shoved him violently back into the shadow of the spur. For an intolerable fraction of time, he peered round the bend and watched.

The black shapeless huddle in the road never moved. Was it some animal, sleeping or dead? He crept forward cautiously, Ferou's old revolver in hand. He put out his fingers toward the vague outline of it. He touched soft cloth, he touched a yielding ma.s.s. Wounds of Christ! it was the body of a man!