What could Don Jaime do? Carson had worsted him signally. The grim drama had become almost a comedy, a farce!
Don Jaime feared longer to persist. It would not do for him to be made ridiculous and laughable.
All at once he lifted his head and looked beyond Carson, beyond Felicidad. In a great voice, he called out:
"Put up your gun, Quesada! I am a wineskin squeezed dry; I am empty of all words and all passions; I am done! Put up your gun, you Wolf-Cub you, and I will put up mine! I had meant to beat you to the first shot—to kill Felicidad and then have you kill me! But now—Carajo, I am done!"
Like mechanical toys on clockwork pivots, every man and woman within sound of the doctor's great voice, turned simultaneously to look for Quesada.
There, twenty feet away, stood the wolfishly gaunt bandolero, a revolver in his right hand trained rigidly on Don Jaime! That revolver had once been Jacques Ferou's!
Not before had John Fremont Carson noticed the revolver in Quesada's hand. He was taken completely by surprise. Little had he realized how close to black tragedy had been the drama in which he had enacted so prominent a part!
In the American's eyes, in the eyes of every man there present, the hidalgo on horseback loomed up, then and on the sudden, with a new and imposing dignity, a rare nobility and magnificence. Don Jaime alone had known of the imminent threat of Quesada's revolver. All the while he had striven to attain his vengeance, all that while Don Jaime had trusted his life to a hair. Quesada had him covered. The mere press of a finger on the trigger, and Don Jaime would have toppled out of the saddle—a dead man!
Quesada had thought Don Jaime all unaware. Now, for the first time, he comprehended the sublime insolence of the hidalgo's persistency. Abashed and shamefaced, he lowered the revolver and shoved it back into his belt.
Don Jaime lifted the horse-pistol from his knee and slipped it into the holster slung from the saddle. Then, without another word and without even a glance toward his daughter, he turned the old nag's head about and went deliberately down the goat path.