“Ho!” she said scornfully. “Is that the tale he tells? It is true there are guns in the south, but guns are also elsewhere! He forgets, does José Perez,––or else he plays for time. This offer,” and she referred to the note, “it is not written since we arrived––no. It was written earlier, when he thought I was held by that renegade far in the desert.”
“I reckon that is true, señora, for after receiving it, Rotil had him chained in a room fronting the plaza that he might see you enter Soledad with honors.”
“Ramon Rotil did that?” she mused, looking at the note thoughtfully, “and he gives to me the evidence against José? Señor, in the Perez lands we hear only evil things and very different things about Rotil. They would say this paper was for sale, but not for a gift. And––he gives it to me!”
Kit also remembered different things and evil things told of Rotil, but they were not for discussion with a lady. He had wondered a bit that it was not the padre who was given the message to transmit, yet suddenly he realized that even the padre might have tried to make it a question of barter, for the padre wanted help for his priestly office in the saving of Perez’ soul, and incidentally of his life.
“Yes, señora, it seems a free-will offering, and he said to tell you it would be in the room adjoining this that Perez would be questioned as to the war material. Rotil’s men have searched, and his officers have questioned, but Perez evidently thinks Rotil will not execute him, as a ransom will pay much better.”
“That is true, death pays no one––no one!”
Her voice was weighted with sadness, and Kit wondered what the cloud was under which she lived. The padre evidently knew, but none of Rotil’s men. It could not be the mere irregularity of her life with Perez, for to the peon mind she was the great lady of a great hacienda, and wife of the padrone. No,––he realized that the sin of Doña Jocasta had been a different thing, and that the shadow of it enveloped her as a dark cloak of silence.
“It is true, señora, that death pays no one, except that the death of one man may save other lives more valuable. That often happens,” remarked Kit, with the idea of distracting her from her own woe, whatever it was. “It might have seemed a crime if one of his nurses had chucked a double dose of laudanum into Bill Hohenzollern’s baby feed, but that nurse would have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocents, so you never can tell whether a murderer is a devil, or a man doing work of the angels.”
“Bill?” Evidently the name was a new one to Doña Jocasta.
“That’s the name of the Prussian pirate of the Huns across the water. Your friend Conrad belongs to them.”