“I pronounce judgment,” he spoke. “You have received many blows. Each blow on your body is quittance in full of the entire debt to the haciendado. Go free. But remain in the mountains, and next time love a mountain woman, since woman you must have, and since woman is inevitable and eternal in the affairs of men. Go free. You are half Maya?”
“I am half Maya,” the peon murmured. “My father is a Maya.”
“Arise and go free. And remain in the mountains with your Maya father. The tierra caliente is no place for the Cordilleras-born. The haciendado is not present, and therefore cannot be judged. And after all he is but a haciendado. His fellow haciendados, too, go free.”
The Cruel Just One waited, and, without waiting, Henry stepped forward.
“I am the man,” he stated boldly, “sentenced to the death undeserved for the killing of a man I did not kill. He was the blood-uncle of the girl I love, whom I shall marry if there be true justice here in this cave in the Cordilleras.”
But the Jefe interrupted.
“Before a score of witnesses he threatened to his face to kill the man. Within the hour we found him bending over the man’s dead body that was yet warm and limber with departing life.”
“He speaks true,” Henry affirmed. “I did threaten the man, both of us heady from strong drink and hot blood. I was so found, bending over his dead warm body. Yet did I not kill him. Nor do I know, nor can I guess, the coward hand in the dark that knifed out his life through the back from behind.”
“Kneel both of you, that I may interrogate you,” the Blind Brigand commanded.
Long he interrogated with his sensitive, questioning fingers. Long, and still longer, unable to attain decision, his fingers played over the faces and pulses of the two men.