Pascual vehemently nodded his heavy head.
"I know, I know!" he agreed heartily. "It is no longer any honor to wear the uniform of the police in Spain. But what think you now of my argument, Don Esteban? Need I recite that shocking affair of the Plaza de Toros of Seville? The glamorous Moors of Spain do not make up stories about their bandoleros robbing brave matadors in the House of God. It is a lizard's trick. Since Quesada stuck-up the popular espada, Lagartijo, in the bullfighters' chapel of Seville, all Spain has been stunned by the sacrilege. And that was but one short week gone—"
Jacinto Quesada drew back from the entangled buckthorn and genista. His brow was ruffled as a mountain stream. So this was the meaning of his dorados' sullen insinuations! Come to think of it, even old Pedro down in Granada had been struck aghast at sight of him whom he had known from a boy.
"Ah, Mother of God!" old Pedro had exclaimed, a strange quavering note in his voice. "It is Jacinto Quesada about whom all Spain talks!" And he had added, upon hearing of the plague: "It is the hand of God, Jacintito! It is a scourge of God striking down those about you because of the terrible vile things you have been doing, these last nights, throughout the peninsula!"
Some unknown was sticking-up persons on the road and in far-off alamedas, and then, with bluster and insane braggadocio, announcing he was Jacinto Quesada! The fool had cold murder in his bowels! He had killed a foreigner, an Englishman. He slayed like a ferocious beast or a crazed man. And he had abused the sanctity of the chapel of the bullfighters in the Plaza de Toros of Seville. The thing was unheard of. It was sacrilege!
"By the wounds of Christ!" swore Quesada softly. "The fellow is odious and detestable. And all his vile ordure is flung at my head. The creature is braiding a noose for my neck!"
Out in the trampled space about the alder tree, the sergeant's voice had risen with a peremptory note.
"Do not stay here, Pascual Montara! It is against all the code of the Guardia Civil, but zut! ride away without me, and you please. I stay here. Understand, hombre; I stay here! Every wolf has his lair, every bandolero his home. This barrio above is Quesada's home. In a week or a month, he must return here. I shall wait that week or that month. He can come only this way. When he comes this way, by the Life! I shall rid Spain forever of his baneful presence!"
Jacinto Quesada stole back around the bend to his picketed horse. From behind the cantle of the saddle, he removed those canvas packs which contained the drugs, preparations, and liquors he had gathered at the doctor's casa. He unwound the reins from about a branch of the sumach bush and tied them loosely to the pommel of the saddle. He broke off a hairy flower stalk from the smoke-plant. Then, with an eye to quietude, carefully he led the pony down the brushy side of the gorge.
Once in the dust-coated road which wound through the bottom of the gorge, he faced the pony down the way he had come and inserted, under the brows of the saddle against the spine, the setule of flower stalk. Immediately the animal, irritated out of his weariness, began fidgeting, flicking his tail, snapping his head round on either side, baring his long yellow teeth and crinkling again and again the skin of his back.