"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; but the bleeding wounds of Christ and the thorn-pierced heart of His Most Virgin Mother shall intercede for my grievously sinning soul on the Day of Judgment!"
He raised the heavy horse-pistol.
The serranos fell from about him like flung chaff. The spittle dried in their mouths; they could not speak. They were blind of eye, and blind and black of brain as to what to do.
The scene was much as before. On the great rock of the village, Don Jaime sat rigid in the saddle like some black-browed Destroying Angel and menaced, with his huge pistol, the pale trembling lily of a girl.
But this time it was not Quesada who intervened. The bandolero long had brooded upon the coming of this inevitable moment; yet now, when ultimately it had struck, the moment found him standing off to one side and a good twenty feet from the great rock where bulked up Don Jaime. Ere the bandolero could interpose himself to obstruct Don Jaime's will, ere he could dash forward to shoulder the perilous rebuttal, came interposition from an unexpected and astonishing source. Stepped forward the American, John Fremont Carson!
Big, broad-shouldered, and wornly angular of face, Carson stepped before the agitated girl, wholly between her and the threat of the leveled gun. He lifted dauntless blue eyes to her Hebraic Jehovah of a father.
"Senor Don Jaime, you have no longer the right to seek retribution on Felicidad," he said with quiet but positive defiance. "Ere you can retaliate on her, you must deal with me. She is now my affianced bride!"
Don Jaime's jaw sagged; an astounded gleam zig-zagged across the hard quartz of his eyes. But quickly came to his aid the iron composure of the hidalgo. Without lowering the pistol, he turned eagle-sharp white head and stony eyes to look down frigidly at the square-jawed American facing him in the street. With a forced politeness, he returned:
"In Spain, know you, Senor Americano, one must ask the father for the hand of his daughter. Should the father agree, the consent of the girl follows as a matter of course. We are very hidebound in these conventions, we Moors; no other ways command honor. The plighted word of a mere chit of a girl—Dios hombre! who would think of respecting that!"
He laughed harshly.