The haciendado glanced at the check, folded it away in his pocket, and placed the end of the rope around the wretched creature's neck in Francis' hand.
"The peon is now yours," he said.
Francis looked at the rope and laughed.
"Behold! I now own a human chattel. Slave, you are mine, my property now, do you understand?"
"Yes, Senor," the peon muttered humbly. "It seems, when I became mad for the woman I gave up my freedom for, that God destined me always afterward to— be the property of some man. The Cruel Just One is right. It is God's punishment for mating outside my race."
"You made a slave of yourself for what the world has always considered the best of all causes, a woman," Francis observed, cutting the thongs that bound the peon's hands. "And so, I make a present of you to yourself." So saying, he placed the neck-rope in the peon's hand. "Henceforth, lead yourself, and put not that rope in any man's hand."
While the foregoing had been taking place, a lean old man, on foot, had noiselessly joined the circle. Maya Indian he was, pure-blooded, with ribs that corrugated plainly through his parchment — like skin. Only a breechclout covered his nakedness. His unkempt hair hung in dirty — gray tangles about his face, which was high-cheeked, and emaciated to cadaverousness. Strings of muscles showed for his calves and biceps. A few scattered snags of teeth were visible between his withered lips. The hollows under his cheek-bones were prodigious. While his eyes, beads of black, deep-sunk in their sockets, burned with the wild light of a patient in fever.
He slipped eel-like through the circle and clasped the peon in his skeleton-like arms.
"He is my father," proclaimed the peon proudly. "Look at him. He is pure Maya, and he knows the secrets of the Mayas."
And while the two re-united ones talked endless explanations, Francis preferred his request to the sackcloth leader to find Enrico Solano and his two sons, wandering somewhere in the mountains, and to tell them that they were free of all claims of the law and to return home.