"Yes, I could love you," she said in a moment. "For, though you are not handsome, like the men of my race, you are true and good and brave: all I dreamed that a man should be until that creature made all men seem loathsome. But I will not marry you till you bring me his head—"
"Oh! come. So lovely a woman should not be so blood-thirsty. He has been punished enough. Besides what I gave him, he's been sent off to spend the rest of his life in some hole where he'll have neither books nor society—"
"It is not enough! When a man betrays a woman, and causes her to be beaten and publicly disgraced—it will be written in the books of the Alcalde, señor!—and shut up in a cave to suffer the tortures of the damned in hell, he should die."
"Well, I think he should myself, but I'm not the public executioner, and one can't fight a duel with a priest—"
"Señor! Señor! Quick! Pull, for the love of God!"
It was Benito who spoke, and he was pushing with all his might against the stone. "She comes—Doña Brígida!" he cried. "I saw her far off just now. Stay both in there. I will take the mustangs and hide them on the other side of the mountain and return when she is gone. That is the best way."
"We can all go—"
"No, no! She would follow; and then—ay, Dios de mi alma! No, it is best the señorita be there when she comes; then she will go away quietly."
They replaced the stone. Benito piled the brush against it, then made off with the mustangs.
"Go far," whispered Pilar. "Dios, if she sees you!"