"I would pit against the huge gorilla's head of the Little One of Arahal, my head of gold for thinking quick thoughts and audacious ones. I would displace him and replace him by my natural superiority of brain. But if that were not enough—Carajo! I would lock knives with him, I would lunge and slash and rip and stab with my navaja, while he tore and stabbed and slashed and lunged with his, until one or the other of us gushed out his life through his wounds and was dead!"
Then it was that Pernales laughed so that the very canyon roared and rang. He rolled back his head; he clapped his hands to his stomach; he opened his mouth to its widest stretch; and he guffawed so tremendously that the horse beneath him staggered and almost overbalanced from the wall. He was Olympian in his laughter.
And why not laugh? Did he not see in his mind's eye the gigantic ruffian nicknamed the Nino de Arahal locked with this stripling, this barefoot child, this suckling babe? Za! The Nino would make ten of him! Zape! The Nino would swallow him at a mouthful! It was preposterous! It was so funny, he cared not a peseta if he laughed himself to death!
But suddenly, through his laughter, slid Jacinto Quesada's low-toned words:
"But if he were altogether too huge and brawny for me to murder in open combat, then I would murder him in some hidden, treacherous way. Treachery is the strength of the weak who are yet strong. If there be no other way, the superior brain resorts to treachery for the superior brain is invincible. While I am still weak of body, I will not disdain to use treachery!
"And, man, man, I warn you! Do not continue to laugh at me! You have laughed quite enough at me, Pernales! Cease laughing this instant! Quick! Straighten your face, or Porvida! the Manchegan knife I have with me, I will use on your horse. I will rip open his belly; and he, with you upon him, will go bounding off the path and fall head over heels down into the abyss!"
Instantly Pernales sobered. His face set into an emotionless mask; his teeth clenched together with an audible click; his eyes became hard as blue bright pebbles. Without seeming to do so, he looked down at the child's hands; and true! there was in those hands a huge, flat-bladed dagger, a dagger of La Mancha. The child was turning it over and over, and studying it with a pensive interest.
Deep within himself, Pernales laughed ironically at his own discomfiture. He could not use the carbine. Without chancing the great risk of sending his horse recoiling and reeling off the path, he could not strike down the child with a blow of his fist! And the child had but to turn aside his gun or dodge his hard fist, and crouch out of harm's way beneath the horse's barrel. Then might he strike up with the dagger, and the horse would make the breakneck plunge as surely as he would scream when stabbed.
"Jacinto Quesada," said Pernales bitterly, "you have caught Pernales in a pretty deadfall! Use your knife; then go for the Guardia Civil and guide a brace of policemen to where my body lies on the bottom of the gorge, and there awaits you the money offered for my head! Cascaras! I judged you altogether too superficially; I was too contemptuous!"
Quietly Jacinto Quesada put the Manchegan knife back in his belt.