"Oh!" exclaimed Benito Bustamente, in a gush of joy and amazement. "Was it you whose shot rang in my ear like the voice of a delivering archangel when that murderous savage's knife was hovering over my heart in order to precipitate the death which his envenomed darts had failed to inflict? How can I thank you?"
He sprang forward, let the cigar fly from his fine teeth, and seizing the Englishman's hand, carried it effusively to his lips.
"Well, there, have done, do stop it, my good fellow!" said the other, embarrassed, "I am heartily glad I saved the life of so graceful a caballero, and more. I cannot say now, particularly, if your present errand has anything to do with the occurrence which culminated in placing you, mighty pale and 'gone' looking, at the mercy of that scalping fiend."
"Something to do with it? All, all!" cried Benito.
They exchanged stories. When the Mexican explained how his despair had goaded him into taking up the trail of Dolores, though ill fitted to combat a horde of ruffians, the Englishman stayed him.
"I was on the same track," said he, "how singular! We might have fallen foul of one another, and had a pretty mincing and slashing duet in the thicket, that stormy night. Well, such a fatal blunder was not in the books."
"Thank heaven! To proceed," went on Benito; "I found Dolores sheltered from the rain in a hollow tree. She was like the dead, speechless, inflexible, cold; but fortunately I carried the means of resuscitating her. When she had been so revivified, I left her to await my return with the steed I proposed stealing from a frightened herd which could be seen by the lightning glare around the base of that Mound Tower. The robbers were within the pile, I could move bodily; to my amazement, I spied, on looking up, a man suspended as by a thread from the top of the cylinder of brick. There, in another part, I recognised another visage, hideous, demoniacally grinning, hovering over this doomed wretch. A knife soon glittered in the hand of the cruel scoundrel. I knew the peculiar profile, the thin lips, the chin and hooknose nearly meeting. It was don Aníbal Cristobal de Luna, as he called himself, the visitor at don José's, suspected then to be affiliated to the salteador. I hesitated not a moment. I could not stay your fall, Señor, but I was bound to revenge it, I fired with the untried gun, which handsomely did its work, and the scream of don Aníbal, whose beauty I had marred, was my reward and an alarm to his gang. But I had time to select a horse, stampede the others, gallop to Dolores' refuge, place her on the saddlebow, and flee round the terrified animals over the prairie. When our flight became slower by fatigue, I lassoed a second horse for Dolores, and we two rode easily on to Guaymas."
"Whilst I was carried away, heaven knows how far, luckily I fell in with a couple of decent fellows, professional protectors of the cattle from vermin, and they conducted me to the post, also whither they were bearing their pelts. What a strange meeting! So your idea of humanity was to shoot close to the ear of a man suspended fifty feet on high, so as to startle him into the drop!" laughing. "Well, shake hands again," continued Gladsden, extending his hand.
"But you are alive?"
"I agree with you there. But if I had not fallen on something so soft as a couple of horses, one of which obligingly bolted and took me out of the robbers' camp, I should have been a pancake. All this thanks to your humanity!"