"That is according to our religion," said the bandolero simply, as if mouthing an irrefutable answer. "The men of the good Dios have consecrated a certain space of earth and there our dead sleep in the bosom of the Church and the Espiritu Santo."
Carson shrugged his broad level shoulders in a sort of helplessness, then asked, "Where is this cemetery?"
"Above—"
"Where it may infect the water ere it reaches you! Oh, you have no sanitation here! This is as bad as India!" He looked up and down the uneven street, at the huddle of cabanas to either side, in incontainable disrelish and vast pity.
"Senor Carson," said Quesada impulsively, "you and Don Manuel and his cuadrilla have done a wrong in pursuing me. Down before the shrine of the Christ of the Pass, I showed you how sincere were my motives in carrying off Felicidad, how great a wrong you had done me in becoming sleuth-hounds of chase. But now that you are here, there is opportunity to right that wrong. We need your aid imperatively! Help me, Senor Americano!" he exhorted impassionately. "Help me and my poor serranos with what you know! Save Felicidad and the others! Down the pestilence!"
The American retreated a step before the fervor of his plea.
"But I don't know, I don't know enough!" he protested deprecatingly. "I'd understand how to clean up this barrio, of course; but in handling the disease, I'd have to work all from memory, vague memory! I'm not a doctor—"
"Don Juan," interposed Morales, valorously stepping into the breach, "Senor Quesada has well said that we did him a great wrong in thus hounding him; here is a pressing opportunity to right that wrong. It is an act of Christian charity to aid the poor serranos. They are dying off like flies in a frost. They need you. Help them, Senor Carson; help them, and my cuadrilla and I will be yours to command! Whatever measures you find necessary to rid this pueblo of its scourge, that will we undertake to carry out!"
"And I," exclaimed the bandolero, with an ardor deeper than any eagerness, "I will go down these mountains to the casa of Torreblanca y Moncada outside Granada. Don Jaime is almost my foster father; I lived in his house once, and I know every nook and cranny of it. From the remnants of the hidalgo doctor's library, I shall secure, to aid your memory, some medical book containing a full exposition of cholera. I shall read it and then bring you—"
"You can read?"