“Oh, if I were only a man,—if I were only a man!”
They were well out of hearing before Percival looked despairingly up at the pink and grey sky and muttered with heartfelt earnestness:
“I wish to God you were. I'd like nothing better than to be soundly threshed by you.”
CHAPTER IX.
Just before sunset that evening, Sancho Mendez was publicly hanged. Confessing the crime, he was carried to the rude gibbet at the far edge of the wheat field and paid the price in full. He had been tried by a jury of twelve; and there was absolutely no question as to his guilt. His companion, a lad named Dominic, callously betrayed by the older man, fled to the forest and it was not until the second day after the hanging that he was found by a party of man-hunters, half-starved and half-demented. He was hanged at sunrise on the following day.
Manuel Crust considered himself glorified. After a fashion, he posed as a martyr. Some sort of cunning, as insidious as it was unexpected, caused him to assume an air of humility. He went about shaking his head sorrowfully, as if cut to the quick by the unjust suspicions that had been heaped upon him by the ignorant, easily-persuaded populace.
Sentiment began to swing toward him. He and his so-called followers were vindicated. It was his gloomy, dejected contention that if Providence had not intervened he and his honest fellows undoubtedly would have been placed in the most direful position, so strong and so bitter was the prejudice that conspired against him. He was constantly thanking Providence. And presently other people undertook to thank Providence too. They began to regard Manuel as a much-abused man.
The burly “Portugee” haunted the cabin of Pedro the farmer. He was the most solicitous and the most active of all who strove to befriend and encourage the unhappy father, and no one was more devoted than he to the slowly-recovering girl. He carried flowers to Pedro's hut; he did many chores for Pedro's wife; he went out into the woods and killed the plumpest birds he could find and cooked them himself for Pedro's daughter.
Presently he began to assert a more or less proprietary interest in the family. It was no uncommon thing for him to issue orders to the nurses; he hectored the Doctor; and on several occasions he went so far as to offend such well-meaning ladies as Mrs. Spofford, Madame Careni-Amori, Mrs. Block and others when they appeared at Pedro's cabin with delicacies for the girl. And finally the people in that end of the camp began to speak of Manuel Crust as a good fellow and a gentleman!