At last he had progressed to a second-class coach that resounded with the voices of indignant and outraged men, that quivered and rang with bass and baritone curses in both Spanish and French. When he had closed in upon this coach, the man on the footboard smiled triumphantly, yanked open the door, and flung himself within.
For a space, it was not as though he had entered a crowded coach; it was as though he had flung himself into a surf of rolling breakers. Masses of words struck him with the velocity and flying weight of charging masses of water. He spread his feet, braced his shoulders and chest to the impacting masses of words, and waited.
The pounding tumulting seas crashed over him; he held his footing; they receded, drew back, ebbed away. Then, before the great zipizape of words could recommence, he held up his hands for silence. Silence was given him. He said:
"I am a Norte Americano, a Yanqui. In my country if a girl were kidnaped by bandits, quite well I know what we Yanquis would do. But this is Spain, not the United States. What are you Spaniards going to do?"
"What can we do, Senor Americano?" asked one of the cuadrilla of bullfighters, a banderillero by his dress. "We ask you that—what can we do?"
"Do not think it an everyday thing," spoke up the matador, Morales, "for blossoming girls to be stolen by Spanish highwaymen and carried off into the mountains. One reads about such happenings in the bizarre and romantic novels of the elder Dumas; but one does not think to see such things occur in real life.
"You would search far in our country's history for a parallel to this outrageous crime! José Maria. Diego Corrientes, Agua-Dulce and Visco el Borje left our women severely alone. They were simple-souled men of the people, risen against oppression. Even as would any humble and pious and hardworking labrador, so these bandoleros en grande feared God and public opinion. Right well they knew they could continue to exist as outlaws only by reason of the favor of Spanish public opinion, not to speak of the favor of God. And they set the fashion for future Spanish outlaws. They made the conventions by which all bandoleros are supposed to conduct themselves to-day. The bandoleros, just before this man Quesada, honored those conventions. El Vivillo and Pernales committed no crimes against Spanish women.
"Senor Americano, you may have noticed that we Spaniards accord our bandoleros a certain respect. Because they have been altogether masculine, varonil, and yet treated our womenkind with the utmost reverence, the bandoleros have wrung from us this esteem which amounts sometimes even to love.
"And even this Jacinto Quesada to-day! He treated me with great consideration, chatting pleasantly about his love of bullfighting and other very human things. And he struck me as being a bandolero of the splendid good old sort—the José Maria, the Visco el Borje sort! Why, he even asked after the health of my wife, Marta, and my two little ones! But now! To find out that he is a renegade, a damnable turncoat from the old bandolero code, an inhuman wretch, a despicable rapist—Porvida!"
Morales' boyishly rounded face flamed with anger and with a great deal more of shame.