"I'm better."
Then he turned to the others.
"Nothing, until to-night," said one. "We must wait for dark before it is safe to move. They will not keep your comrade at Valverde, and we must try to find out where they have taken him."
"I'll be quite well in a few hours," Walthew declared. "But what is likely to happen to Grahame?"
The man shrugged.
"Who knows! The regular course would be to try him for smuggling arms, but I do not think the President will follow that plan. They may send him to Rio Frio, because it is some distance from the coast, and it is possible he will be given a chance of escaping on the way."
"Do you mean that they may let him go?" Walthew asked eagerly.
"He would not go very far. You must understand that the rurales have authority to shoot a prisoner who tries to escape, and the Government finds this useful. Sometimes they arrest a man whom they think the court could not convict, and an excuse is found for not watching him very closely when he is being taken to the nearest jail; perhaps a guard is called away when they stop for food. There is cover near, and the prisoner makes a dash for freedom; then the guard, who has been hiding, fires and the administration is rid of an enemy. Sometimes the rurales break into the house of an obnoxious person and, taken by surprise, he gets angry. A threatening movement is enough; he is shot down. It is simpler than taking him before a judge who may be bribed to let him go."
"A gang o' bloodthirsty scoundrels! I'm thinking it's time ye turned on them," Macallister said, while Walthew sat silent with a tense face and fury in his eyes. "But, so far as we ken, they havena' shot Mr. Grahame."