The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. His face was stiff and livid with restrained bile.
"I leave you now, Don Manuel," he said with acid politeness, "to visit that other Eldorado, Senor Carson. Perhaps mon Americain won't think so much of his peseta bills. And who knows? Perhaps the great espada will also change his mind by the time I return!"
At the door, he turned and called out bitingly to the two sullen serranos:
"You will see, mis paisanos, that Monsenor Morales, who burned your dead, will want for everything and get nothing! When he changes his mind, one of you may come for me!"
He smiled toward Morales his peculiar aggravating smile; then, twisting the spikes of his straw mustache, swaggered out the doorway.
There was a soft thud up near the altar at the end of one platform. The mountain boy, Gabriel, had rolled off upon the ground. On discolored hands and knees quaking from the disease, he came creeping with stealthy quietude and laborious feebleness down the passageway. Half-tilted between rigid teeth, he held a tin cup containing a preparation in wine of powdered aromatic chalk.
He had achieved half the length of the runway when, on the sudden, one of the serranos discovered him. The fellow roughly swung the boy up under one arm. The contents of the tin cup was spilled. The boy began a frenzied squirming and kicking. In a tumult of febrile revolt and piteous pleading, he wailed:
"Let me go, let me go to him—to Don Manuel of my heart! He is good, he is brave, he is like the very God Himself! He is sick only because he helped me and the knife slipped! Ah, Diego Lerida, I have known you since I was born. Won't you let me go, won't you let me give him something to ease the pain? He did the same for the wife of you, ere the good Dios called her. Only a little chalk, Tio Diego, only a little chalk and wine.
"No? You won't let me go! Then may Satanas claim you for a gnat of a dunghill—you and all your vile spawn! And may the Christ and His Compassionate Mother bring hope and health to my own brave espada—"
Came a hoarse shout from Morales: "Hola, my brave little golden one! I drink to you, Gabriellito!"