"Jacinto Quesada! That swollen toad, that strutting mountebank in rags and tinsel, that upstart, the zascandil! Por los Clavos de Cristo! and you flung yourself at him?"
"But he is altogether the arrogant and brave man, altogether the savage and magnificent one!"
"Carjo! he is only a mountaineer's brat. We grew up on opposite slopes of the same mountain of the Sierra Nevada. His clodhopper of a father sold firewood to the sweet mother of me! He is uneducated; has no resource or originality. And he lacks entrails as well as brains! I am more varonil, I tell you; more impetuous with headlong daring than he. Were there a man such as Miguel Alvarado in the shoes of Jacinto Quesada, there would be things done, I wot! But I will show you what is what. I—"
"Yes, yes, you will show me—how, when?"
But to the ears of Miguel Alvarado the wind had borne sound of the to-do raised by an approaching horse. He hearkened to that pounding and clattering, looking down the sweep of foothills below the barranca. He saw nothing just at once. But the sounds became more distinct, drew nearer. Those sounds leaped toward them in great panther leaps.
Suddenly a man on horseback came bounding over the hogback of a hill right below. He wore the tight uniform and the businesslike look of a man of the Guardia Civil. His policeman's three-cornered hat of shiny leather shimmered in the light of the newly risen moon. With the velocity and abandon of a French dragoon, he galloped full tilt up toward the barranca. And as he came, he shouted:
"Hola, Miguelillo!"
"It is my officer, my parent!" whispered the young policeman, and he swore softly in disappointment. Then, with the absolute obedience of only a Spanish son, he shouted back: "Here I am, Don Esteban, my father! What do you want of me?"
The sergeant of police came up like a driving pillar of sand and dismounted while his horse was in full charge. Swinging his quirta, he advanced swiftly upon the pair. There was in him no sign of the weakness of age. He had a short, knife-sharp white beard, and a face as lean and haughty as a griffon vulture's. From his tricorn hat still hung down, behind his head, a sun shield of white linen cloth.
"Come away with me!" he ordered peremptorily. "I have word that Jacinto Quesada is in the mountains near the Pass of Despenaperros. While there's work to do for Spanish policemen, I'll not have you playing the bear for the entertainment of any senorita in Spain, no matter how fine the moon!"