"The Mexican army retreated in great haste southward after Buena Vista, in order to meet Scott, who was advancing on Mexico by the way of Vera Cruz. That left the country comparatively clear for us, and we came through the mountains, until we saw the Castle of Montevideo. When we saw it, we believed still more strongly that this was the place, but we knew that the biggest part of our work was before us. We would have to spy, and spy, and keep on spying before we could act. Any mule driver or sheepherder might carry news of us, and we must have a secure hiding-place as a basis. After a long search we found this cabin, which I don't think had been occupied for several years. We soon fixed it up so it was comfortable, as you can now see. There's a little spring at the west edge of the cove, and on the other side of the ridge there's a little valley with water and grass, but with walls so steep that a horse won't climb 'em unless he's led. Our horses are there now, having perhaps the best time of their lives.
"When we were located, good and snug, we began to spy. I believed after we met the woman at the well that fortune was favoring us. Arenberg here talked a lot about the spirits of the forest and the stream, some old heathen mythology of his, to which Bill and I didn't pay any attention. But anyway, we had luck. We scouted about the castle for weeks, but we didn't learn a thing, except that de Armijo was now governor there. We could find no more trace of you than if you had been on the moon.
"At last our lucky day came. We ran squarely upon a good-looking young Mexican, a vaquero. There wasn't time for us to get away or for him to get away. So we, being the more numerous, seized him. I suppose he thought he was going to be killed at once, as we were Americans, looking pretty tough from exposure and hardships, and so to make a play on our good feelings--Bill Breakstone could understand his Spanish--he said that once he'd tried to help a Gringo, a prisoner, in the great castle in the valley. He said he'd carried a letter from him, asking for help, and that the prisoner was not much more than a boy, taken in a raid from Texas three years ago.
"It flashed over us all at once that we had found the right man. Everything fitted too well together to permit of a mistake, and you can believe that we treated Porfirio, the vaquero, the finest we knew how, and made him feel that he had fallen into the hands of the best friends in the world. Were you still alive? We waited without drawing breath for the answer. You were still alive he answered, and well, so far as a prisoner could be. He knew that positively from his mother, Catarina, who was a cook at the castle, although he himself would not stay there, as, like a sensible man, he liked the mountains and the plains and the free life. He did not tell us of the blow that de Armijo had given you, perhaps because Catarina had said nothing of it to him, but we learned that he hated de Armijo, who had once struck him when he was at the castle, for some trifle or other--it seems that de Armijo had the striking habit--and after that we soon made our little plot. Catarina, of course, was the center of it, and her duties as a cook gave her the chance.
"It was Catarina who put the thread in the tamale. She might have put the letter there, but the writing on it would have been effaced, and even if it could have remained she did not dare. If the paper had been discovered by the Mexicans, she, of course, would have been declared guilty, but thread, even a package of it, might have found its way into the loose Mexican cooking, and if it had been discovered none of the sentinels or officers could have made anything out of such a slender thing. We trusted to your shrewdness that you would drop the thread out of the window, because there was nothing else to do with it, and you didn't fail us."
"But who tied the note on it?" asked John.
"Catarina, again--that is, she was at the end of the chain, Porfirio was in the middle, and we were at the other or far end. He passed the letter in to her--he works about the castle at times--and she tied it on the end of the thread. The key and the dagger reached you by the same route. Then we knew that, although you might unlock the door of your cell, you could never go outside the castle without the aid of some one within. For that reason we told you the night on which to unlock it, and the very hour, in order that the right man might be waiting for you at the head of the stairway. Bill Breakstone had to be that man, because he can speak Spanish and the Mexican dialects, and because, lucky for you, he's been an actor; often to amuse others he has played parts like the one that he played last night in such deadly earnest.
"Catarina got the keys--there are duplicates to all the cells--so we sent that up early, and on the day before your escape she stole the one to the big gate that guards the stairway. It was easy enough to steal the clothes for Breakstone, take him in as a servant, and his nerve and yours did the rest. But we must never forget Catarina and her son Porfirio, the vaquero. Without them we could have done nothing."
"I'm prouder of it than of any other thing in which I ever took part," said Bill Breakstone.
"It was not one miracle, it was a chain of them," said John Bedford.