But even as the Americans breathed easier, they stared aghast at the old man.
“Crazy?” he repeated. “Crazy?” he fairly shrieked, clutching Boone by the sleeve. “No, I am not! Señor, say that I am not! No, no, no, I am not crazy, not yet–not–not before it is done, not–before––”
“God!” Boone half whispered. “Look at his eyes now!”
The old man checked himself in trembling. No help for him lay in human testimony. But there was his own will, which had driven his frail body. Now as a demon it gripped his mind and held it from the brink.
427“Go, out of here, all of you!” he burst on them. “Go, I have more to tell–more, more, more, do you understand?–but I’ll tell it to no one, to no one, unless to Mister Dreescol.”
A raving maniac or not, canards or not, there might be in all this what was vital. The Americans stirred uneasily, in a kind of awe, and at a nod from Driscoll they left the tent.
Murguía grew quieter at once. His faculties tightened on the effort before him. He was alone with the man who would understand, so he thought; who had the same reason to understand, so he thought.
Driscoll had shared nothing of the late emotions. He had smoked impassively. His interest was of the coldest. Only his eyes, narrowed fixedly on the Mexican, betrayed the heed he gave. When the others were gone, he uncrossed his legs, and crossed them the other way, and thrust the corncob into his pocket.
“Sit down!”
Murguía dropped to the nearest camp stool.