Of the twelve ladrones, only four escaped, crawling away wounded. Four they killed out of hand, and four more, including Cinicio Dagujob himself, they hanged on that new gallows opposite Don José’s warehouse, as a warning to all men.
Felizardo staggered back against the wall, half-blinded by the blood from his forehead, trembling, as a man does after his first fight; then, without the slightest premeditation, he made the mistake of his life. He slipped away in the darkness, down to the beach, launched a canoe, and began frenziedly to paddle towards San Polycarpio. He had remembered Dolores and her possible peril, and forgotten all else—Don José, the Guardia Civil, the questions he would be expected to answer.
The corporal asked one of those same questions of Don José half an hour later, after the prisoners had been safely locked in the cells.
“Who gave the alarm?” he demanded.
“Felizardo,” the merchant answered. “He was fighting in the doorway when we rushed down, fighting like a dozen devils.”
The corporal frowned. “Then he must have opened the door himself. Why? Where is he now?”
Don José poured himself out another glass of wine with a rather shaky hand. He was an old man, and his nerves were upset. “Felizardo is gone, they tell me. They have searched, thinking he might be lying wounded, but they cannot find a trace anywhere.”
Once more the corporal frowned, and drummed on the table with his fingers. He was not very brilliant, and he was trying to construct a theory. At last, “Let them search again,” he said severely.
A few minutes later, one of the clerks came back with a crumpled slip of paper in his hand. “We have found this, Senor,” he said.
The corporal handed it to Don José—despite that huge, dyed moustache and his straight back, his eyes were growing old, and one does not take spectacles when one is on service. “Will you read it, Don José, read it aloud slowly?” he asked with dignity, then turned a fierce gaze on the knot of clerks gathered in the doorway, who fled hurriedly.