Quesada did not dare turn round. But Ferou, his blond lids fluttering with stupendous surprise, gave a quick glance back over his shoulder. He saw the hidalgo doctor standing in the low doorway, the huge horse-pistol leveled in one harsh fist, his eyes gleaming like quartz in the sun.
The Frenchman gave a precipitant leap to one side. He was quick as an ape. He slewed round, his revolver lifted.
An explosion burst from the pistol of the doctor. Ferou's revolver dropped to the mud. He clutched his right wrist. It was trickling blood from where a bullet had creased the flesh like a branding wire.
"Quesada!" cracked the thin lips of Don Jaime. "Pick up that revolver. You, Ferou, march in here!" He menaced the Frenchman with that huge gun which was loaded and ready for more quick work.
Quesada turned round, thereat, and lifted from the mud the Frenchman's revolver. He shook off the clinging silt and pointed it at Ferou. His ashy face working like a monkey's with abrupt and nervous apprehension, the Frenchman marched into the hospital.
Once inside, in the runway between the blanketed figures of plague sufferers, Don Jaime snapped out a terse and inexplicable command. Ferou thought himself the only one that understood its purpose. A shuddering fit seized him. He knew that, in the receptacles beneath his armpits, were concealed the small mahogany-colored leather purse he had taken from Quesada and the peseta bills he had pitilessly mulcted out of Carson and Morales. He thought that the doctor was searching for them.
"Undress!" repeated the hidalgo.
The Frenchman's slate-colored eyes fluttered about. He saw Quesada threatening him with his own revolver. There was no help for it. With fingers suddenly thick and clumsy with nervousness, he began to unbutton his gray tweeds.
"And you, too, Quesada!" ended the doctor. "Give the Frenchman's revolver into the keeping of Morales, and undress, too!"
Quesada did not at all understand. He saw Morales sitting up, as if prepared to lend aid, a pillow bolstering his back. He passed the Frenchman's revolver into the hands of the matador. Then bewildered but blindly obedient, he began to doff his alpagartas, rough corduroys, and sheepskin zamarra.