"Then you insist on my telling you my name?"
"Oh, Caballero, I have no right to insist; I only ask it."
"Very good," said the stranger, "you shall know my name; but I warn you that it will teach you nothing."
"Pardon me, Caballero," Don Ruiz remarked, with a touch of exquisite delicacy, "this name, repeated by me to my father, will tell him every hour in the day that it is to the man who bears it that he owes the life of his children, and a whole family will bless you."
In spite of himself, the stranger felt affected. By an instinctive movement he offered his hand to the young man, which the latter pressed affectionately. But, as if suddenly reproaching himself for yielding to his feelings, this strange man sharply drew back his hand, and reassuming the expression of sternness, which had for a moment departed from him, said, with a roughness in his voice that astonished and saddened the young Mexican, "You shall be satisfied."
We have said that Doña Marianita, in looking round her, fancied she saw the body of a man stretched on the ground a few paces from the fire. The maiden was not mistaken; it was really a man she saw, carefully gagged and bound. It was in a word, one of the two bandits who had pursued her so long, and the one whom the stranger had almost killed with a blow of his rifle butt.
After recommending Don Ruiz to be patient by a wave of his hand, the stranger rose, walked straight up to the bandit, threw him on his shoulders, and laid him at the feet of the young Mexican, perhaps rather roughly—for the pirate, in spite of the thorough Indian stoicism he affected, could not suppress a stifled yell of pain.
"Who is this man, and what do you purpose doing with him?" Don Ruiz asked, with some anxiety.
"This scoundrel," the stranger answered, harshly, "was one of the band that attacked you; we are going to try him."
"Try him?" the young gentleman objected; "We?"