“And I—” Benicia began, but Grant quickly put in:
“Will you not consider that I was really serving my own private ends—a score to be evened between Colonel Urgo and myself?”
Bim covered a reminiscent grin with a broad palm as Grant hurried on, eager to withhold from the girl opportunity to speak her thanks.
“When I was brought here I thought it best to keep silent on the matter of my own private grudge against this man. But now that it appears we all have common cause against him I think I may speak. Urgo himself was responsible for my being shot.”
He saw Benicia’s eyes grow wide, read the surprise that parted her lips in a breathed exclamation. He thought he saw, too, just the flash of something no eyes but his own could understand, and he was glad. Briefly he sketched the incident of the gambling palace in Sonizona, his encounter with Urgo in the office of the jail, the march with the chain gang.
“And so,” Grant concluded, “Colonel Urgo found a dead man come to life when he saw me in the patio to-day. When Señorita O’Donoju was out of hearing for a moment I could not resist a shot which left our friend guessing whether or not I had told you, señor, how I came by my wound.”
“Ah, yes,” from Benicia in a hushed voice. “I knew the minute I returned there had been something between you. Urgo was like a cornered animal.”
“And so he turned on you,” Grant could not help saying. “If only I could have guessed beforehand his attack—”
Again silence fell. Grant was alive to the play of unspoken thought between father and daughter; these two alone in the immensity of the desert and facing unsupported the craft of an implacable enemy. He sensed the battle between their pride and their desperate need for an ally: the one impulse dictating that what was the secret affair of the House of O’Donoju must remain strictly its own secret, the other moving them to confide in him, who unwittingly had been drawn into the struggle. Gladly would he have offered himself as a champion; but he must await their initiative. Suddenly Grant recalled what Bim had told him of Urgo’s threat at the meeting with Don Padraic on the desert road: how the head of the Casa O’Donoju would be held responsible for harbouring an escaped convict. There was no blinking his duty in this direction.