Her eyes flashed hatred. “He escaped because the sheriff helped him. His life was forfeit to me. So then was the sheriff’s. MacQueen he admit it. But when the girl promise to marry him he speak different.”
“What girl?”
“Not Melissy Lee.”
“Si, señor.”
“My God! Melissy Lee a prisoner of that infernal villain. How did she come there?”
The Mexican woman was surprised at the sudden change that had come over the men. They had grown tense and alert. Interest had flamed into a passionate eagerness.
Rosario Chaves told the story from beginning to end, so far as she knew it; and every sentence of it wrung the big heart of these men. The pathos of it hit them hard. Their little comrade, the girl they had been fond of for years—the bravest, truest lass in Arizona—had fallen a victim to this intolerable fate! They could have wept with the agony of it if they had known how.
“Are you sure they were married? Maybe the thing slipped up,” Alan suggested, the hope father to the thought.
But this hope was denied him; for the woman had brought with her a copy of the Mesa Sentinel, with an account of the marriage and the reason for it. This had been issued on the morning after the event, and MacQueen had brought it back with him to the Cache.