“I do speak so! Perhaps you are more the man than I have thought. May I put you to the test?”
“Gladly will I stand it!” he said.
“Then prove at least that you will help remove this stain on our family name. Prove that you are not partners with the man who put it there. Prove that, though outcast at present, and pursued by white men and red, you are a loyal man. Do one thing for me, Captain Fly-by-Night, and I will try to think better of you, and I will go on to the mission freely and remain in the guest house looking to you for help, as you have suggested. I can promise nothing more, but, if this much will content you for the time being——”
“Name what it is you would have me do, señorita!” he said.
“A thing that perhaps you will not dislike. Kill me this Rojerio Rocha!”
CHAPTER XVII
“PERSPIRATION, SEÑORITA!”
As she spoke he had imagined a score of things she would ask him to do, but never this. He realised by her words and the tone of her low voice how the girl had been struck to the heart by the thought of a member of her family—no matter of how distant a branch—turning traitor and renegade.
There had been a quality of vehemence in her sentence that had struck him like a blow. Unconsciously he started, and unconsciously his heels swung back and his spurs dug into the flanks of his horse. The movement was mechanical; he had seemed to try to dodge her sentence as he would have touched his steed to dodge the blow of a mounted swordsman.
With a snort of fright at this unexpected and unmerited severity, the horse sprang to one side, almost unseating its rider and hurling him and the girl to the ground. The animal Señora Vallejo rode reared suddenly, and the señora gave a shrill screech and tried to clasp her steed’s neck. But the unexpected application of spurs to his mount saved the caballero’s life, perhaps, for even as the horse sprang a musket spoke and a bullet whistled past uncomfortably close, and an Indian sentinel’s shrieking challenge came out of the night, to be caught up by another far to one side, and by still another, until it seemed that they had ridden into a hostile camp.
The caballero clasped the señorita closer and galloped madly after the horse the señora rode, for the woman was shrieking in her fright and the caballero was afraid she would be thrown and injured. Another musket spoke from a thicket as they flew past, and for an instant the caballero loosened his grip of the reins and swayed forward in the saddle, but almost immediately he sat straight again and peered ahead, trying to locate the other horse.