"Because you do not recoil from the rough touch of my dorados; because your eye fearlessly meets my eye; because you talk without falter and without affected ease; because you act like a man who is a man!"

explained Jacinto Quesada with sincerity. And to clinch the argument, he added, Spaniard-like, "I am utterly brave myself. Do you think I cannot recognize men of my own kind?"

The American fidgeted, blushed slightly, and smiled a very rueful smile.

"But why, if I am so very brave," he countered, "did I not rebel and kill some of you when your men herded me out on the prairie with the rest, and then yanked me forward to pick my pockets? There is a Colt's automatic in my hip pocket, but you'll notice I have not used it!"

"A brave man is not necessarily a brave fool like the hidalgo don, Quixote of La Mancha," returned Quesada shortly. "You Americans are a sentimental race."

Then, turning to one of the searchers, he ordered, "Relieve the Yanqui caballero of the pistol that is such a temptation to him, Rafael Perez!"

Presently, eager to have their turns and be done with the necessary formalities, pressed forward a cuadrilla of bullfighters. A few of them wore the ordinary street dress of men of the profession. They would be known anywhere in Spain for bullfighters by their broad, stiff-brimmed, low-crowned black hats and their black, tightly fitting clothes.

The most of them were still in bull-ring costume, however. In the busy months of the Taurine Season, when bullfights are almost daily events and contracts must be fulfilled, the Brethren of the Coleta are kept continually on the jump--rushing precipitantly from town to town, from bull ring to railroad train and straightway again to bull ring--and they have little or no time to change from bull ring costume into street clothes and scarcely more time to spend in eating, sleeping, or doing anything else than murdering bulls. Therefore, it is a habit with bullfighters to railroad everywhere about the peninsula in full ring regalia; and one often sees these athletes speeding, gorgeously clad, over the desert _vegas_ or alighting at the depots of bullfight-crazy towns.

First to come forward was the espada, the dexterous with the sword, the murderer of bulls, the man of death.

Jacinto Quesada took one look at him, then with gusto cried, "Por los Clavos de Cristo! if here is not the great Morales!"

"_Seguramente_, yes, I am the great Morales!" returned the matador, bowing in acknowledgment of the swift and hearty recognition. He wore pink silk stockings, gold-braided green silk breeches, waistcoat, and jacket, a white ruffled shirt, a crimson tie, and a black cap. He wore the black rosette and ribbons of the matador in his _coleta_, his queue--that long, thick, and sacred lock of hair all bullfighters wear as the time-honored insignia of their ancient profession.

He was not yet thirty. He was a little below the middle height. He had a long body and short muscular legs. He was all iron and strength. And his brown Andalusian face was the typical young bull fighter's face, boyish, almost effeminate with its mild contours; a face made expressive and pleasing by eyes soft, dark, thick-lashed and very brave; a face that was the easily read table-of-contents of an honest, simple-souled, intrepid man.

Jacinto Quesada's eyes smiled, and his whole face beamed, as he looked at him, for he recognized in this man whom he had long admired because of his splendid courage in the bull ring a kindred spirit.

"And how are the wife and the children, Manuel?" he asked.

"Most excellent in health, thank you, Jacinto! And you? And your family?"

"Superb! But ah, Morales, what would I not give to be watching you killing your bulls in the Seville bull ring at this moment, instead of doing what I am--setting my dogs of ladrones upon you to rob you of your hard-earned money! Say but the word, and you will be exempted from this indignity!"

"A thousand thanks; but no, I would rather not! It is too much honor!"

"Too much honor for you, one of the three bravest men in Spain? You, whom I have ridden fifty miles many times to see give the _suerte de matar_, the stroke of death! Why, to sit in the sun and watch you perform, I have ventured into Seville in disguise when the men of the Guardia Civil were as thick about the bull ring as flea-bitten curs about a camp of Gitanos; and I have counted the risk nothing!"

"But if I am one of the three bravest men in Spain, as you say, who are the others? Who is the second? Who is the third?"

"The second! Can you not guess?"

"Ah, _chispas_! yes. Yourself, Jacinto Quesada, of course!"

"And the third?"

The brow of the matador darkened with professional jealousy. Tentatively he asked, "You do not mean the espada, Lagartijo, do you?"

"No; I do not like Lagartijo's ceremoniousness and caution; I like only _diestros_ of the good old charge-and-take-a-chance Sevillian school. I mean that Yanqui traveler over there. He is like us two; he is an iron-boweled man!"

The bullfighter turned around and took a good look at the lone American.

Then he slapped his breeches and jacket and invited the bearded salteadores to continue with the search.

After the cuadrilla of bullfighters came a fat gray parish priest; then several tourists from Central and South America; then a pretty flight of rosy and demure young convent girls, bound northward under the vigilant watch of two prim sallow _duennas_; and then a tall blond man with a straw-colored mustache darkened and stiff with wax.

It was palpable this man was no Spaniard. He was dressed with neatness, even elegance. Strangely, his face looked much older than his lithe athletic body. It was a sharp, clever face, but a peculiar ashy pallor overspread it and, about the mouth, there were hard grim lines. The nose was long, high-bridged, predatory. The eyes were slate-colored, small and bright and furtive. They had a peculiar trick of drooping at the outer corners, a trick that gave him a calculating and rather sinister look.

He had been traveling with his young wife, a very lovely slip of a girl.

Her turn was to come next. She stood at the edge of the muster of people, looking after her foreign-looking husband with blue eyes oddly eager rather than anxious. She was a golden-haired girl of the rare Castilian blond type. She seemed made all of gold, ivory, and rose petals. Among all those frightened people, she alone was without fear.

As she stood there, looking calmly about her, she seemed altogether the innocent and trustful child; to all appearances she should have been still in some Spanish convent, sequestered and secure--not abroad in the world where there are bandoleros and even men of worse sorts.

Her husband, the foreign-looking man, was about to be put to the search when, aroused by something more than curiosity, Jacinto Quesada stepped forward and asked brusquely, "You are a Frenchman?"

"I am a Frenchman, _monsenor_."

"And why, Frenchman, do you make signs with your hands to me?"

With good reason Jacinto Quesada asked that question. Ever since he had been singled out for the search, the Frenchman, looking everywhere but at his hands, had been persistently making covert signals with those hands. First he drew two fingers down across his left cheek; then he made certain finger movements very like the word-spelling finger movements of the deaf and dumb; and finally he stroked his throat and Adam's apple with a certain lingering wistful care!

CHAPTER VI

The pale Frenchman looked full at Jacinto Quesada, and suddenly his small slate-colored eyes blazed like sunlight on ice.

"Do you not comprehend of the signs the meaning?" he asked sharply in tolerable Spanish.

"No."

"Nor that which I desire you to understand when I do this thing?"

Impetuously he stepped forward and grasped, with his right hand, the right hand of Jacinto Quesada. What followed seemed only a most ardent handshake. Then he dropped Quesada's hand and stepped back, a.s.suming his old pa.s.sive pose. And only Quesada knew that there had pa.s.sed between them another signal--he alone knew that the Frenchman, on gripping his hand, had tapped the wrist of that hand with his index finger twice.

Rumpling his brow, the youthful bandolero consulted with himself for a s.p.a.ce. Then, his face clearing, decisively he said:

"No, Frenchman, your signals to me have no meaning. It is, perhaps, that I am not of sufficient knowledge; I am only a poor Moor of Andalusia, you know. But what is the message you wish to convey by your cabalistic signs? I am curious, senor; tell me in honest Spanish and interestedly I shall listen."

The tall blond Frenchman laughed ruefully under his waxed mustache.

"As you do not comprehend my signs," he said, "to explain to you the meaning would do me little good, I fear."

Returned Quesada, somewhat disappointed, "You fear rightly, Frenchman!"

He made a slight gesture of the hand. Two of his dorados seized the Frenchman and proceeded to subject him to a rough overhauling. The Frenchman grimaced with impotent rage and, narrowing his naturally small calculating eyes, watched the searchers' every move with covert anxiety.

Brusque, precipitant, hasty was that search. Very easily might it have been more studied and thorough. But a gold watch, a few Spanish gold and silver peseta pieces, two rings set with diamonds and an emerald scarfpin were taken from him before he was liberated by the searchers.

The rings and the scarfpin were not plucked from his hands and necktie; they were found deep in his pockets where he had hidden them, thinking perhaps, to smuggle them past the bandoleros.

At that, the emerald scarfpin was but a very ordinary jimcrack and the diamonds of the two rings, though huge and pretentious, had the dishonest and gla.s.sy look of paste imitations. Though but simple Moors, even as they called themselves, the bandoleros were not so ingenuous as to be deceived by them; and they wondered greatly why he had concealed them with such pains. Remarked sarcastically one of the searchers, a certain Ignacio Garcia, addressing Quesada: