There was a mighty muster of servants, though it was better than three in the morning, at the door, and Gladsden who saw that the two mules were coming round in the courtyard, in charge of his faithful man, seriously contemplated seizing don Stefano by the collar and holding him as a buckler, whilst he cowed the domestics with his revolver and rushed for the saddle. But his host made no sign, and so the Englishman mounted and rode out into the road without any bar.
He reasoned, therefore, that he would be attacked on the highway by the bandits on their return to cut his throat in the villa, since don Stefano's servitors were above the business.
Hence he was rather relieved than startled, about an hour before sunrise, when he heard a couple of gunshots not far ahead of him and his man. The latter was so frightened, or so much of an accomplice in the ambush, that he belabored his mule, turned and vanished in the darkness, increasing his speed with a shout of terror as there rushed after him a horseman who had just passed Gladsden with the dizzy rapidity of a meteor, screaming, "Muerte, hombre—murder ahead man!"
Pretty well on the alert, and his eyes quite accustomed to the darkness, to say nothing of the night breeze off the sea having blown away the last trace of the long stay in the heated room, Gladsden divined that the fugitive had been mistaken for himself, and had been fired upon by his own chosen assassins.
There was a clump of trees ahead, from around which the fleeing cavalier had come. On the instant, Gladsden imagined a trick. He flung himself off his mule, to whose flank he applied a stroke of his whip, which started it off not leisurely, and lay down, half across the road. He had his revolver ready in his hand. There was a yellow stripe in his riding cloak, which made him tolerably distinguishable in the gloom.
Way layers have good eyes. Two men, advancing on foot, speedily spied this stumbling block, and were so flattered by that evidence, as they conceived it, to the goodness of their aim, that they forbore to delay to recharge their guns which they carried easily "at the trail." One of them was more eager than the other to examine the prey, and threw himself before the second. Gladsden judged this an excellent opportunity to kill two birds with one bullet, on the expectation of the missile perforating the foremost and then burying itself in his comrade. He waited only long enough to see his teeth gleaming in a savage and gleeful smile, and pulled the trigger.
The robber uttered a scream of pain and surprise, and fell back upon his mate, who instinctively pushed him aside so that he measured his length in the deep water cart furrows. The other, paralysed with fear, was not at all disenchanted by seeing the supposed victim of their double shots rise and present the revolver of which one chamber had furnished a quietus to his friend, whilst he said, having seen the man's face in the flash—
"Good morning, Master Ignacio, otherwise the lieutenant of our dear acquaintance, don String of names, chief of the bandoleros, and skipper of the Little Joker. If you will just give me the address of your sister, so that I can deliver your last dying message, and that of your dear brother, Pepillo, I shall require nothing further before I rid me of your company!"
Ignacio gave a howl of rage which exemplified the reason for his nickname of "the Mountain Cat," at facing the avowed witness of his brother's decease, the probable slayer, but the revolver daunted him, and the allusion to his sister riveted him to the spot, so that he did not budge, even so much as an eye, to look at his companion who gave a last groan in the rut.
As Mr. Gladsden had no notion of ever again bestowing so much of his time on this nocturnal cavalier, he now designed to inform him about the inheritance of his brother bandit. With a quick transition of feeling, the hearer ejaculated a prayer, luckily short, and springing on the speaker dragged him into the thicket at the roadside.