"Your friend understands Spanish?"
"Sufficiently, Señorita," assured Red, "to follow your conversation."
"It is well," she said quietly, "but your address flatters me. I am Señora, not Señorita." She held out her left hand with a curiously proud gesture; on the third finger was a heavy plain band of dull gold.
"I am desolated—madame," said Red, instantly. Douglass bowed his polite acceptance of the correction.
"Yes," she went on wearily, "I am a married woman, no matter what the world, what you may think. The ceremony was performed by the Jefe Politico of Ameca, my natal town, though not solemnized by the church. There was a witness, but he is dead now. It was Pedro Rodriguez, the man you killed the night he and Señor Matlock burned the hay on your rancho."
In the tense silence which followed, the ticking of Douglass's watch was distinctly audible. Red's hand, fumbling with his watch chain, went up swiftly to his armpit; but Douglass, interpreting her even intonation more correctly, never moved a muscle. She smiled reassuringly at McVey:
"Nay, Señor. There is nothing to—to regret. He was a dog—and I love you for it." The hand sank to his knee and he flushed slightly.
"I was only a young girl," she went on rapidly, "and he was as big and as fair as his words. My mother was dead, my father engrossed with business cares: he was owner of the 'San Christobal' mine. I met him at night, for my father liked him not and forbade me. It was my first affair, and I thought I loved him." She laughed, a mirthless sibilance that was marvelously like a snake's hissing, her eyes hard and dry.
"I had a brother, an only one, Rafael. He was very dear to me and loved me greatly. He was, of the mine—what do you name it, the one who holds and pays the monies? Ah, mil gracias! the 'treasurer.' He was of the lively the liveliest and played much at the cards. And Don Bartholomew was of his friends the most esteemed. We knew not then that he made his living so: he had come to buy lands, he said, and he had letters, many from great men; they were not written by those whose names they bore as I know now, but we of Mejico know little of such things and trusted him fully.
"Then, one night, mi padre discovered me in his arms and there was much sorrow. I was to the casa confined and to him was said that we should see him no more. But you know our adage: 'No ay cerradura si es de oro la ganzua' (there is no lock but that will open to a golden key), and Pedro Rodriguez, our servidor, was very poor. Like Eve, I listened to the serpent's voice; I was very young."