His mother sped into the house, but Jacinto stood by the dripping block, immersed in thought.
Presently Jacinto Quesada sat on his little stool in the far corner of the great fireplace and watched the bandolero eat. What huge teeth he had and how white they were! Over each mouthful the whole broad face worked, the lips and cheeks making a dozen grimaces, the jaws snapping and grinding.
Every little while, the bandolero mumbled from a full mouth some question. He seemed much interested in the murdered Juanito. But it was almost as though he considered poor Juanito's death a humorous mishap; at certain of the widow's remarks he laughed roughly, and his laughter stormed through the cabana like a wind through one of the boulder-strewn passes overhead.
An hour later he was astride his horse again and riding down the goat-path that dropped away from Minas de la Sierra and wound through the lower gorges. It is never the habit of the bandolero to linger in a pueblo or village longer than a very short time; most sensational and brief and furtive are his visits.
There was a fat and brilliant moon, that night. It was as though a snow had fallen, the heads and shoulders of the mountains were so white. Down into the dark moaning gorges, one could see a great distance.
Pernales walked his horse very slowly, for the path led along the sheer of a precipice. But while he kept a vigilant eye on the way ahead, ready to throw himself toward the wall of the gorge should the nag stumble on a loose stone, or shy from the path, and plunge screaming into nothingness, Pernales continually cast wary quick glances toward the crags and boulders overhead, and continually bent his ear back the way he had come. It was almost as though he feared an ambush in that lonely perilous place. It was almost as if, at any moment, he expected men of the Guardia Civil to rise from behind every rock, and the command of the Guardia Civil to sound in his ears:
"Alto a la Guardia Civil!"
He rounded a great rock that threatened to tear from its moorings down into the winding gorge below. Abruptly he halted his horse and his carbine came up. A long tense hush. Then suddenly he exploded:
"Who are you that stands beside the way?"
Came the answer in a child's thin voice: