A piece of moon came up and shot long pale slithers of light down the rock walls. Ahead, in the sudden wan light, he made out the bent and bundled figure of an old, shawl-wrapped peasant woman. She was coming toward him up the gorge. She seemed making little catching sounds, as if softly weeping.
"A Dios, mother," he greeted, as he rode past.
She gave him neither answer nor notice. Her few wisps of white hair streaming in disarray from under her flat worsted cap, she went by, sobbing quietly, as if utterly oblivious of his presence.
Quesada looked after her bent form and shook his head commiseratingly.
"Ah, there has been some little domestic trouble in her cabana this night!" he remarked to himself. "And she is going on, the poor creature, to seek strength and consolation from the lonely Christ of the Pass. It is the way they have in these desolate hills—Hola! What's the matter, my bony Pegasus!"
The nag beneath him, suddenly shying, had come to a dead stop, and now was shivering in every limb. They had just rounded the bend which portaled the pass. Leaping afoot in the stirrups, Quesada gazed over the lifted frightened head of the horse. Ahead in the open road and shapeless in the vague moonlight, he saw something lying still and black!
Ever wary of ambush, resultant from long outlawry, he sprung out of the saddle and getting the horse by the bridle, shoved him violently back into the shadow of the spur. For an intolerable fraction of time, he peered round the bend and watched.
The black shapeless huddle in the road never moved. Was it some animal, sleeping or dead? He crept forward cautiously, Ferou's old revolver in hand. He put out his fingers toward the vague outline of it. He touched soft cloth, he touched a yielding mass. Wounds of Christ! it was the body of a man!
His hand jerked back in superstitious fear. The man did not move; he was lying on his face. Quesada put out his hand again and touched the still thing with a braver and more prying touch. All at once he turned it over.
Stark in the moonlight showed a short knife-sharp white beard, a fine-chiseled imperious nose, and a swarthy face, lean and haughty as a griffon vulture's! The revolver fell from his palsied hand.