"Pass that for the present," ordered Dick curtly. "Number two please."
"That you sign a paper drawn up by a lawyer giving all your rights in the Rio Chama Valley to Señorita Valdés and promise never to go near the valley again."
"Nothing doing," answered the prisoner promptly, his jaws snapping tight.
"But yes—most assuredly yes. I risk much to save your life. But you must go to meet me, Señor. Is a man's life not worth all to him? So? Sign, and you live."
The eyes of the men had fastened—the fierce, black, eager ones of the Mexican and the steelly gray ones of the Anglo-Saxon. There was the rigor of battle in that gaze, the grinding of rapier on rapier. Gordon was a prisoner in the hands of his enemy. He lay exhausted from a terrible beating. That issues of life and death hung in the balance a child might have guessed. But victory lay with the white man. The lids of Menendez fell over sullen, angry eyes.
"You are a fool, Señor. We go to prison for no man who is our enemy. Pouf! When the hour comes I snuff out your life like that." And Pablo snapped his fingers airily.
"Maybe—and maybe not. I figure on living to be an old man. Tell you what I'll do, Menendez. Turn me loose and I'll forget about our little rumpus last night. I'd ought to send you to the pen, but I'll consent to forego that pleasure."
Sulkily Pablo turned away. What could one do with a madman who insisted on throwing his life away? The young Mexican was not a savage, though the barbaric strain in his wild lawless blood was still strong. He did not relish the business of killing in cold blood even the man he hated.
"If you kill me you'll hang," went on Gordon composedly. "You'll never get away with it. Your own friends will swear your neck into a noose. Your partner Sebastian—you'll excuse me if I appear familiar, but I don't know the gentleman's other name—will turn State's evidence to try to save his own neck. But I reckon he'll have to climb the ladder, too."
Sebastian pushed aside his companion angrily and took the American by the throat.