"The elegant French rooster has but a thinly lined crop, maestro!"

He grasped the Frenchman's elbow and swung him about-face. Then he gave him a shove toward the group already plucked and gutted, shouting harshly, "Away with you, you false jewel! p.r.o.nto!"

The Frenchman hastened to merge himself into the background. Once his face was turned away from the bandoleros, his pebbly eyes sparkled with profound relief; they sparkled with inconcealable joy; and he smiled a superior triumphant smile.

"Who comes next?" asked Jacinto Quesada, without much interest.

"The beautiful young wife of the Frenchman, maestro. She, with the mouth that is a nest for kisses!" And Rafael Perez pointed her out.

"And it please you, you may come forward, Senora Dona!" in a carefully softened voice called Pio Estrada, another of the searchers. Strange, but her youth and beauty and high hidalgo look had moved the man to a ruffian's attempt at courtesy and gentleness.

As she made to step forward, Jacinto Quesada turned his eyes upon the beautiful golden-haired girl and, for the first time, gave her a special and particular scrutiny.

"Hola!" he gasped. "What is this?"

He stepped forward a step, his eyelids narrowed, his eyes gleaming; and he shot toward her a second look, piercing, probing. It was as though he were shocked and aroused, puzzled and confounded. While he looked eagerly and long at her, he muttered:

"What a resemblance! But no--it is not a resemblance. She is she herself!"

He moved slowly towards her as though drawn thence by an irresistible influence. Suddenly he called out a name!

"Felicidad!"

On the barren, windless plain to the right of the stalled carriages, they were all gathered, the bandoleros with their carbines, the travelers so like a herd of cattle in a _rodeo_. Those pa.s.sengers, already searched and robbed, were in a separate group; they were sequestered from those not yet searched and made to deliver. No sound came across the everlasting flats but the low incessant chitter of the desert-loving wheatears, little fuzzy fat birds that live among the mimosa and the th.o.r.n.y acacia and the stunted ilex of that ugly and desolate Manchega veldt. Out from the main drove of pa.s.sengers moved bravely the golden-haired girl. And then, a name was called, and the windless air became suddenly electric with drama.

The Frenchman's young wife moved forward, seemingly unaware of Jacinto Quesada's call, of his now devouring gaze. Well, suddenly and all on the moment, she turned about-face and started swiftly for the stalled train!

It was altogether unexpected. She was not the first of her s.e.x to be singled out for the search; she had seen nuns and convent maids and even Gitanas treated by the bandoleros with a respect and courtesy that amounted almost to reverence; and yet, at the last instant, alarm and trepidation had overcome her, it seemed. She was hysterical, perhaps; almost insane with terror.

Be that as it may, her unexpected and erratic performance caused an echoing panic to sweep over the other pa.s.sengers. Even the bandoleros felt the contagion. Cursing excitedly, two of them started to pursue the golden-haired girl, while the third, Rafael Perez, standing near Quesada, raised his carbine and screamed hoa.r.s.ely:

"Come back here, you outrageous minx!"

The crowd, momentarily free from the dread of the bandoleros, had commenced an insensate shouting and milling. Now, had Perez fired off the carbine, the whole hold-up might have ended then and there for the bandoleros in an inglorious headlong rout. The pa.s.sengers, already out of thrall to the salteadores, would have risen in tumultuous, uncontrollable fury at this firing on a defenseless woman.

But Jacinto Quesada rose to the crisis and saved the situation. Excited though he was, he sprung toward Perez, tore the carbine from his hands and, pointing it at the crowd, shouted imperiously to his men:

"Back, you fools, to your stations! Guard these people. Shoot any that break away! And don't mind the girl! I'll bring her back--I, and no one else!"

Presto! and the bandoleros were back in their old positions, their carbines sweeping the crowd. The imminent danger of stampede was dissipated. The discipline of dread again prevailed.

Handing the carbine back to Perez, Jacinto Quesada started after the girl. She had fled without aim, without purpose, he thought, like a frightened doe that cares not where she flees so long as she flees from the huntsmen. Her panicky flight would do little good, however; a sort of trap was the stalled train, not a refuge and sanctuary.

The girl was just about to open the door of one of the third-cla.s.s coaches and fling herself therein when, all at once, she cast back a look, first at her tall blond mustached husband, then at Quesada.

Strangely, her glances seemed to have become preposterously mixed. It was a look of dread and loathing she threw back toward her husband; and a look of entreaty and beseeching she sent toward the pursuing bandolero!

With his long mountaineer's legs, Jacinto Quesada sprinted to the train.

Hardly had the door of the third-cla.s.s carriage closed behind the golden-haired girl than he was at that door. Open he flung it and in he burst.

"Felicidad! Felicidad, _querida mia_, my darling! It is I, Jacinto--Jacinto Quesada! You have naught to fear from me. And if you had told me that he, the Frenchman, was your husband, I would not have robbed him. Porvida! everything taken already shall be given him back.

And as for you, dear Felicidad--"

She had backed herself against the door opposite. Now she came forward swiftly, her face paling and flushing, her lip a-quiver. It was not as though she were glad with sudden recognition: it was as though she were terribly agitated by some deadly fear. She said, in a dry expressionless tone:

"I heard your name mentioned by some pa.s.senger as we were bundled from the train, Jacinto, and ah! how grateful to G.o.d I was when I first saw you, almost half an hour ago, standing among those ruffianly ladrones! I remembered the time you saved me from my father's quirta--and I needed you so much more, now!

"All this long, long afternoon I prayed that something would happen--anything, anything! G.o.d of my soul! how I prayed! But even after I discovered you and realized that, for our childhood's sake, you would protect me, it took all my courage and strength to flee from the crowd and conceal myself here, where I could speak to you and not be spied upon or suspected by that evil, that terrible man!"

Almost in a whisper were her words spoken, but they crashed upon Jacinto Quesada's brain like exploding, detonating sh.e.l.ls. He reeled back, overwhelmed, staggered, knocked all to pieces. He gasped:

"Por los Clavos de Cristo! what is all this?"

"Ah, _Maria purissima_! He does not understand! But all, I shall tell him!"--and swiftly, precipitantly, the girl went on:

"This Frenchman. He calls himself Jacques Ferou. He was the only one that was kind to me and even until two hours ago, I thought I loved him.

We were to be married in Madrid to-night--but now--"

"Then he is not already your husband! Carajo! I thought--"

"No; we but eloped this morning. And now, I would not continue on with him; I would turn back! I am afraid--afraid!"

"But tell me all from the beginning. Your words turn my brain to a stew!"

CHAPTER VII

Jacinto Quesada had known Felicidad's father, Don Jaime de Torreblanca y Moncada; he had lived in the great, cold, dingy house near Granada; he had tasted the secluded, lonely life of Felicidad. Therefore, she had but to say a few sketchy rapid sentences and he comprehended the beginning of everything.

"Of late years, my father has become gradually poorer, Jacinto," she said.

Quesada nodded his head understandingly. Don Jaime had never refused his physician's services to the poverty-stricken and wretched; and the poverty-stricken and wretched were always becoming sick; and the poverty-stricken and wretched seldom paid. Small wonder that Don Jaime's fortunes had fallen into decay!

"My father had no money put by to keep him in his old age; but he always said he would sell those old beloved books of his when he became incapacitated, by age, for a physician's arduous toils, or when bitter necessity pressed him hard. You must know, Jacinto, that father's ancient, yellow-leafed books are worth much, much money."

She went on to explain. Learned men, famous men--some of them scholarly descendants of n.o.ble families, others erudite plebeians with the right to affix a dozen initials after their names--were always coming to Don Jaime's house from the University of Salamanca and the Museo Provincial of Seville to examine those books and to write historical treatises and critiques from them. And it was not unusual to find one of these bookworms, these bibliophiles, these _hombres del todo aficionado a los libros_, making eager hints to purchase such of the precious dingy tomes as they considered within their means.

Some of the books had been possessed by Don Jaime's family for hundreds of years; others he had come by through his G.o.dfather who was a famous Spanish historian and very rich; and still others he had himself discovered when doctoring ruined hidalgo families and the monks of poverty-gutted monasteries; and he had taken these finds in place of monetary fees. Naturally enough, therefore, he hated to part with any of this great treasure in books.

Fearing an old age of stony poverty, however, Don Jaime at last made up his mind to put the books on sale. The money he might receive from marketing the books he planned to invest in Argentine bonds. Three months gone, he wrote to two great houses that deal in rare and valuable books; the one in London, the other in Paris.

Posthaste, two months since, came to the house outside Granada, the buyer for the London firm. In far-away cold London, they had heard of Don Jaime's collection, for there was not another collection of its like outside of Spain. For two weeks the London book-buyer lived in the casa with Don Jaime and Felicidad, cataloguing and pricing the books. Some of the old quaint authors he rejected as of little worth, but others he called "glorious Golcondas" and offered Don Jaime such a sum for them that he was amazed, astounded. He had not expected to receive so much money for the whole aggregate and total of his collection.

"Three weeks ago, after paying my father a fortune in bank notes,"

continued the girl, "the English book-buyer, Senor Havelock Moore-Ingraham, went away, and with him, borne by a caravan of ten mules, went the cream and richness of my father's library.

"Then came to our house this Jacques Ferou. He said he had been sent by the Paris house to whom my father had written. My father told him that he was too late to bid, that all the books of value had been sold.