Now even though the law had caught a saint that had strayed too far outside the boundary of Heaven, and desired to hang him, Rodriguez knew that it was his duty to help the law while help was needed, and to applaud after the thing was done. The law to Rodriguez was the most sacred thing man had made, if indeed it were not divine; but since the privilege that two days ago had afforded him of studying it more closely, it appeared to him the blindest, silliest thing with which he had had to do since the kittens were drowned that his cat Tabitharina had had at Arguento Harez.
It was in this deplorable state of mind that Rodriguez' glance fell on the merry eyes and the solemn predicament of the man in the leather coat, standing pinioned under a long branch of the oak-tree: and he determined from that moment to disappoint la Garda and, I fear also, my reader, perhaps to disappoint you, of the hanging that they at least had promised themselves.
"Think you," said Rodriguez, "that for so stout a knave this branch of yours suffices?"
Now it was an excellent branch. But it was not so much Rodriguez' words as the anxious way in which he looked at the branch that aroused the anxieties of la Garda: and soon they were looking about to find a better tree; and when four men start doing this in a wood time quickly passes. Meanwhile Morano drew near, and Rodriguez went to meet him.
"Master," said Morano, all out of breath, "they had no bacon. But I got these two bottles of wine. It is strong wine, which is a rare deluder of the senses, which will need to be deluded if we are to go hungry."
Rodriguez was about to cut short Morano's chatter when he thought of a use for the wine, and was silent a moment. And as he pondered Morano looked up and saw la Garda and at the same time perceived the situation, for he had as quick an eye for a bad business as any man.
"No one with the horses," was his comment; for they were tethered a little apart. But Rodriguez' mind had already explored a surer method than the one that Morano seemed to be contemplating. This method he told Morano. And now, from little tugs that they were giving to the doubled rope that hung over the branch of the oak-tree, it was clear enough that the men of the law were returning to their confidence in that very sufficient branch.
They looked up with questions ripe to drop from their lips when they saw Rodriguez returning with Morano. But before one of them spoke Morano flung to them from far off a little piece of his wisdom: for cast a truth into an occasion and it will always trouble the waters, usually stirring up contradiction, but always bringing something to the surface.
"Señores," he said, "no man can enjoy a hanging with a dry throat."
Thus he turned their attention a while from the business in hand, changing their thoughts from the stout neck of the prisoner to their own throats, wondering were they dry; and you do not wonder long about this in the south without finding that what you feared is true. And then he let them see the two great bottles, all full of wine, for the invention of the false bottom that gives to our champagne-bottles the place they rightly hold among famous deceptions had not as yet been discovered.