Again silence fell. Grant was alive to the play of unspoken thought between father and daughter; these two alone in the immensity of the desert and facing unsupported the craft of an implacable enemy. He sensed the battle between their pride and their desperate need for an ally: the one impulse dictating that what was the secret affair of the House of O’Donoju must remain strictly its own secret, the other moving them to confide in him, who unwittingly had been drawn into the struggle. Gladly would he have offered himself as a champion; but he must await their initiative. Suddenly Grant recalled what Bim had told him of Urgo’s threat at the meeting with Don Padraic on the desert road: how the head of the Casa O’Donoju would be held responsible for harbouring an escaped convict. There was no blinking his duty in this direction. “My friend tells me, Don Padraic, that Colonel Urgo threatens your arrest as well as my own; that you will be held responsible for concealing a fugitive from justice. That cannot be, of course. To-morrow, if Quelele can take Bagley and myself in the car--” “No!” Benicia’s denial came peremptorily and with a hint of passion which gave Grant a sting of surprise. “No, señor, we do not turn wounded men into the desert--particularly a friend who has served us as you have done.” Again Grant saw in the firelit pools of her eyes just an instant’s revelation of depths he yearned to plumb--the aspect of a beginning love hardly knowing itself as such. He scarcely heard the voice of Don Padraic seconding his daughter’s protest. “The hospitality of the Casa O’Donoju,” he was saying, “can hardly recognize such silly threats. Colonel Urgo’s hope was that we would send you back over the Road of the Dead Men to Caborca or Magdalena where, naturally, you would be made a prisoner. Please dismiss from your mind any idea of our permitting ourselves to play into this man’s hands.” Bim Bagley ventured to break his silence: “Grant here and I have important business together up over the Line. We ought to be moving soon’s we can.” The white-haired don turned to Bim with a gracious spreading of the hands. “When Señor Hickman feels able to make the journey Quelele will take him and yourself, Señor Bagley, to westward. There is a way through El Infiernillo up to the Arizona town of Cuprico. By so going you will avoid any trap Urgo might lay. But you will not hurry Señor Hickman’s going”--Don Padraic interjected reservation--“and you, Señor Bagley, surely can remain with us until then.”