Quesada awoke early and with a renewed strength. He brewed for the grandee another pot of fresh aromatic coffee.
Don Jaime had gone down behind the cabanas to release his hobbled old skate of a horse and lead him to water. When he returned, his huge horse-pistol was strapped to his waist.
He quaffed two cups of the coffee in quick succession. He stained, with marked and aloof indifference, his usually immaculate white point of a beard. Then, without a word, with feruled face determined and grim, he returned into the hospital to his urgent ministry.
It was coming noon. Quesada was sunning himself before the hospital, according to his daily wont, when Ferou appeared around one mud wall with the suddenness of a jack-in-the-box.
In his right hand the Frenchman showed a revolver. He pointed the revolver at Quesada. With a politeness that seemed more deadly than the gleam of the gun, he said:
"You will arise, Senor Don Jacinto. You will do all that which I tell you to do. Aupa!"
The chair, tilted against the mud wall, banged down upon its forlegs. Quesada got to his feet.
"March forward past me. Now stop. It is good, my brave bandolero. Now, with me behind you, march toward that great rock on the brink of the pueblo!"
Everything was happening as the doctor had foretold. The tall Frenchman nudged Quesada with the muzzle of the revolver in the small of his back. They started on. And then, all at once, from the gloom of the chapel behind them, came the galvanic voice of the hidalgo:
"Alto! Drop that gun, you French leech!"