Loosening his blanket, he listened tensely in the moonlight. And came the thud! thud! thud! of a machete striking with lust in a human body, then the strange voice of José: “Perdoneme!—Forgive me!” the murdered man cried as he fell.
The American waited for no more. Dropping his blanket he jumped for the cactus cover, and stooping, took the downslope like a rabbit. The pistol-shots rang out after him, but the Mexicans don’t as a rule take good aim. His bedroom slippers flew off, and barefoot, the man, thin and light sped down over the stones and the cactus, down to the hotel.
When he got down, he found everyone in the hotel awake and shouting.
“They are killing José!” he said, and he rushed to the telephone, expecting every moment the five bandits would be on him.
The telephone was in the old ranch-building, in the dining-room. There was no answer—no answer—no answer. In her little bedroom over the kitchen, the cook-woman, the traitress, was yelling. Across in the new wing, a little distance away, José’s Mexican wife was screaming. One of the servant boys appeared.
“Try and get the police in Ixtlahuacan,” said the American, and he ran to the new wing, to get his gun and to barricade the doors. His daughter, a motherless girl, was crying with José’s wife.
There was no answer on the telephone. At dawn, the cook, who said the bandits would not hurt a woman, went across to the hacienda to fetch the peons. And when the sun rose, a man was sent for the police.
They found the body of José, pierced with fourteen holes. The American was carried to Ixtlahuacan, and kept in bed, having cactus spines dug out of his feet by two native women.
The bandits fled across the marshes. Months later, they were identified by the stolen blankets, away in Michoacan; and, pursued, one of them betrayed the others.
After this, the hotel was closed again, and had been re-opened only three months, when Kate arrived.