Quesada found himself unable to see its owner. An opaque blackness was fogging his eyes. But he knew that the voice belonged to Manuel Morales.
"Put down the wood, Manuel!" he heard Carson say. There was a strange note in the American's voice, a grim metallic note. "Go away. Get more wood, Manuel. Leave me alone. They tell me I cannot burn the dead. They are rebellious. I'll show them!"
Quesada gripped himself that he might bear on. There was a rushing and pounding of blood in his ears. The voices seemed fainting low and dim with distance, as if the speakers were drifting away from him.
"Senor Carson," feebly he heard Morales say, "this is your affair, but I am stanchly behind you. When you took up this task of cleansing the scourge from the barrio, I said that Manuel Morales and all his cuadrilla would be yours to command. It is so; they are yours; they must obey you! I go away; I leave them to you. Do with them what you will. Teach them!"
Like the noise of a remote waterfall came to Quesada's ears a muffled crash. It might have been the sudden casting upon the rock of a bundle of faggots. He only knew, of a sudden and all at once, that he was reeling. The water he had drunk seemed turned to liquid fire; his stomach was burning up, his whole tottering frame was burning up!
As from far away, he heard a shout. He could not see.
"Heart of God—look! Jacinto Quesada! He is falling! He has got it, he has got it!"
Quesada felt himself pitching forward and falling, falling, falling as if from one of the cinder-gray precipices of the sierras. A rush of sound boomed in his ears:
"It is the hand of God! Aupa, aupa! It is a divine sign that we are right! Porvida, men! Down the sacrilegious Americano! Sweep him from the rock! Kill him, kill him! He must not burn our dead!"
A tremendous sound seemed to burst the membranes of the bandolero's ears. Perhaps it was the report of an automatic. At any rate, as if a bullet had thudded on his own frontal bone, he felt a sudden dazzling crash against his forehead. He had banged down upon the rock!