The table collapsed with dull creakings, and then the affair of mauling and writhing became a bear pit. Grant fought with steady, measured short-arm jabs delivered at whatever object lay nearest. When one arm was pinioned he swung the other against the restraining body until it was freed. Some one sank teeth in his shoulder. “Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!” came the shrill cry of battle from somewhere in the mill. Then a blow at the base of the brain which meant lights out for Grant. When consciousness came halting back he found himself standing half-supported by two of the rurales in a dark street and before a high gate in unbroken masonry. The gate swung inward. He was propelled violently through the dark arch and into a small room, where sat a man in uniform under a dusty electric globe. He did not look up from the scratching of his pen on the desk before him. A door behind the writing man opened and Colonel Urgo entered. His start at seeing the bloodied and half-clothed figure which the rurales supported was well acted. A hand came to the vizor of his cap in mocking salute. Then he turned to the man at the desk and exchanged low words with him. “Ah, Señor ’Ickman”--Colonel Urgo’s voice was tender as the dove’s--“I regret to learn you are here in the _carcel_ on serious charges. The one, counterfeiting the coin of Mexico; the other, resisting officers of the law. Very regrettable, Señor ’Ickman. But, remembering your courtesies toward me on the train yesterday, let me assure you of my willingness to serve you in any way. You will command me, señor.” A sudden lightning flash of comprehension shot through the clouds that pressed down on the prisoner’s mind. He saw the whole trick of the counterfeit dollars in his pocket and remembered the little Spaniard’s threat on the observation platform of the train the night before: “To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo is a law unto himself.” Grant strained forward and his mouth opened to incoherent speech. “And now, señor,” Colonel Urgo continued blandly, “unfortunately you will be locked up incommunicado.” Five minutes later Grant Hickman, behind a steel-studded door in a Mexican jail, was as wholly out of the world as a man in a sunken submarine. CHAPTER V THE GARDEN OF SOLITUDE Benicia O’Donoju by the side of the big Papago Quelele and with the twin towns on the Line behind her--ahead the unlimned immensity of the wilderness--gave herself to the exhilaration of flight. For the skimming and dipping of the little car over the wave crests of the desert was like the flight of the desert quail, who rarely lifts himself above the height of the mesquite in his unerring dartings from bush to bush. On its partially deflated tires, provision against sand traps and the expansion of imprisoned air under heat, the skeleton thing reeled off its twenty miles an hour with snortings.