Here was a place of beauty and a fragrant cave of coolness--the very secret heart of the Garden of Solitude. Open to the sky and with cloistered dimness of the four sides of the house all about, the patio was a tiny jungle of climbing things, all green and riotous blossoms. A stately date palm reigned in the centre behind the little basin of the fountain; curtains of purple bougainvillea draped themselves down its shaggy ribs; lavender water-hyacinths sailed their little barques in the pool; geraniums flamed in living fire against the pillars of the arcades. There in the garden waited a man all in white. Snow white his heavy hair and beard, though the life in his deep-set eyes and the vigorous set of his shoulders belied age; white were his thin garments of silk and flannel. He caught the flash of a red head through the greenery, saw an eager, breathless face turned questioningly. “’Nicia, heart of my heart--!” Then she ran to him, paused just an instant to lift swift fingers under his chin and tilt his head. Their eyes measured each the love that welled brimming in the soul’s windows. Then the father drew his daughter close to his heart and his lips brushed her forehead. “’Nicia, my strong one, your father has great need of you.” CHAPTER VI JUSTICE The Mexican theory of the treatment of prisoners, their status before the law and the responsibilities of government toward them has few complexities and knows no interference on the part of prisoners’ welfare leagues or humanitarian congresses. When a man is arrested south of the Line he straightway ceases to be enumerated among the living; if, haply, he reappears in the course of weeks or years his family looks upon the prodigy in the light of a resurrection. Such resurrections do not occur often enough to dull the edge of the popular interest attending them. There are several dim roads, peculiarly Mexican, down which a prisoner may march to oblivion, with no record of his expunction left behind. Officials with easy consciences find these extralegal methods of clearing the docket handy and expeditious. Grant Hickman, new to the Border and utterly ignorant of customs and manners in the republic of _poco tiempo_, necessarily could not possess a background of sinister knowledge against which to build doubts of his immediate future when he found himself locked in a cell. He was in darkness deep as Jonah’s. He ached from his scalp to his toes. A gingerly groping hand applied to various parts of his body took stock of the exterior costs of that healthy fight in the gambling palace. The heat of battle was still on him. He recalled how nobly the big Arizonan swung his chair from the vantage of the crap table; what a virile call to battle was the stranger’s “Ride ’em, Noo Yawker!”