On came the men facing trial by ordeal. Now and again the imprisoned cock thrust his head out with snake-like darting, and the individual who was poised over the kettle hiccoughed fear. The young man who had dodged back tried the trick again when he was near the kettle; but the one behind him held him by the shoulders and forced him on.
The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, made a downward sweep of his hand and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly leaped at him and gripped his right hand. No smudge of soot on the fingers.
“Hai—ee!” Quelele called, and the line stood still. He wrenched the young man’s hand high above his head and showed the fingers clean. “Hai—ee!” chorused fifty voices. Quelele started to drag the wretch back to the kettle.
Then his victim went to his knees—to his face in the dust. He rolled and kicked, screaming. Still Quelele dragged him nearer the kettle, his right hand firmly gripped in the vise of his own two, forefinger extended to take the print of soot and draw the cock’s crow.
“I did it! I did it!” the wretched creature blubbered. Quelele dropped him as if he were a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forward menacingly. The murderer fumbled in his trousers pocket and brought out a shining silver peso, which he threw from him with a gesture of horror. Quelele picked it up and turned it over in his palm, his brow heavily knotted. He passed it to Benicia.
The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, whereon the spread eagle grips a snake and a cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut was scored through the neck of the eagle.
The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the mutilation and cried out to her in pleading, “The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-señor Urgo tells me many months ago when I receive the sign I shall kill or my brother, who is in his prison, will be shot!”
“And he gave you this—” the girl began.
“Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his thunder-wagon and tosses me this peso. ‘Find the knife in the room of the wounded gringo señor,’ he commands. ‘Use no other.’”