The argument reached down to their bandit instincts. “Bueno, Rafael, bueno!” Another called: “Trust thee to see a peso through a dead man’s shirt. Put up thy knife, Ilarian. It was Tomas’s throat it flashed at last when he took Catalina, the pretty mestiza, away from thee.”
The fellow still stood, undecided. He had drawn the knife. Dislike to back down kept him muttering and bristling like an angry dog till Ramon pulled a roll of notes from his breast.
“Here, hombre.”
The man’s huge mouth split in a grin. In his eagerness to secure his share, the fourth man came running uphill, dragging Lee’s horse by the bridle, and while they argued over the division and gambled for the last odd note, she spoke in English.
“I would never have thought to find you in alliance with bandits against me. Why did you do it? It can only bring disaster.” From which she ran on, touching with all her strength and skill on the chords of memory—their childhood, budding youth, incident, fond reminiscence, her own faith in his goodness, pride in his honor. “And now would you destroy it all? The respect and affection I have always had for you? And what have you to gain by it? Surely not my love.”
She thought he was shaken. Looking into his face, she had been shocked and astonished at the change wrought in a few days. Like mountain slopes stripped of their verdure, burned down to the hard slag by volcanic fires, so its softness and youth were gone, leaving in bold relief the hard lines of passion and hate. For one moment a quiver shook its grimness. But there was no softening of the burning eyes, for it took out of bitter anger.
“What have I to gain?” He threw up his head in defiance. “You! with love or without it!”
By its very unnaturalness his quiet was more ominous than his violent outpourings of the other day. She took her breath in sudden fear.
“Ramon, what are you going to do?”
Danger inhered in a light shrug, with its defiance of consequences. “Take you to San Angel—to be married, hard and tight, by jefe and priest.”