Noon had passed before he wheeled his stallion homeward. He was trotting regretfully out of the cover of woods into the heat of the savanna lands. The drum of fast-flying hoofs and an exultant cry warned him that treachery was afoot. He had purposely gone unarmed, but now how he longed to close his fingers over the butt of a service pistol. Out from their ambush rushed a squad of horsemen, Henriquez at their head. With horses rearing and kicking, pistols barking, the unequal fight was on. The butt of a pistol fell with solid thud on the back of his head, as they milled about him.
When Stanley Graydon recovered his senses he was trussed in his saddle like a pack of coffee. Ahead of him he saw Captain Navarro, limp in his saddle, supported by one of the party. A crimson splotch was staining the youngster’s side. Beyond loomed the gates of a hacienda. Through a grove of mango trees water gleamed. At the end of a row of flame trees, scarlet with blossom, the troop halted.
The gates swung open, and they moved at a walk to the steps of a wide veranda. The agitated cries of a woman, the stern bass of a man’s excited queries, were enough to tell him that it was the hacienda of Don Rafael Navarro, on the shores of Ramona Bay.
The coolness of the interior into which he was hurried was grateful after that trussed-up ride in the blazing sun. His wrists and ankles were swollen from their bonds. His head ached frightfully from the pistol-butt’s blow. It left him lethargic to the hostile looks of the group that faced him. He listened with a mocking smile, while Henriquez told his fantastic tale of a fight in which Graydon was made the aggressor. There was no flinching from the steel-blue eyes of Don Rafael.
He was tempted to protest that he had been unarmed; that the wound of young Captain Navarro could only have been inflicted by a wild pistol shot from one of his own friends, but at his first words Don Rafael silenced him.
“Enough! It shall be as you advise, Colonel Henriquez. He will remain a prisoner here. On the outcome of my son’s wound shall await the final decision. If the good God wills that my son shall die——” He halted. The silence was significant.
“José!”
A forbidding mozo, barefooted and clad in blue denim, stepped forward. The orders were too swift for Stanley Graydon to follow, but they awoke an evil grin on José’s face.
“Your hands and feet will no longer be bound, señor,” Don Rafael addressed him. “If you attempt to escape, however, José’s machete has a sharp edge, and my hounds are quick on the trail.”
A snowy-haired woman, evidently his wife, drew herself sharply against the wall, as he and José passed. Her sensitive mouth was twisted in aversion.