"I can tell when she is anywhere near, for my illness leaves me. It's a fact! And her hands--Well, she lays them on my head, and it no longer hurts; the fever disappears. There is some cool, delicious magic in her touch; it makes a fellow want to live. You have perhaps noticed it?" "N-no! You see, she never lays her hands on my head. However, I dare say you're right. All the sick fellows talk as you do." Esteban looked up quickly; his face darkened. "She--er--nurses OTHERS, eh? I'm not the only one?" "Well, hardly." There was a brief pause; then Esteban shifted his position and his tone changed. "Tell me, have you heard any news?" "Not yet, but we will hear some before long I'm sure." "Your faith does as much for me as this lady's care. But when you go away, when I'm alone, when I begin to think--" "Don't think too much; don't permit yourself to doubt," O'Reilly said, quickly. "Take my word for it, Rosa is alive and we'll find her somewhere, somehow. You heard that she had fallen into Cobo's hands when he sacked the Yumuri, but now we know that she and the negroes were living in the Pan de Matanzas long after that. In the same way Lopez assured me positively that you were dead. Well, look at you! It shows how little faith we can put in any story. No, Rosa is safe, and General Gomez will soon have word of her. That's what I've been waiting for--that and what you might have to tell me." "You know all that I know now and everything that has happened to me." "I don't know how you came to be in a cell in San Antonio de los Banos, two hundred miles from the place you were killed. That is still a mystery." "It is very simple, amigo. Let me see: I had finished telling you about the fight at La Joya. I was telling you how I fainted." "Exactly. Norine bound and gagged you at that point in the story." "Some good people found me a few hours after I lost consciousness. They supposed I had been attacked by guerrillas and left for dead. Finding that I still had life in me, they took me home with them. They were old friends from Matanzas by the name of Valdes--cultured people who had fled the city and were hiding in the manigua like the rest of us." "Not Valdes, the notary?" "The very same. Alberto Valdes and his four daughters. Heaven guided them to me. Alberto was an old man; he had hard work to provide food for his girls. Nevertheless, he refused to abandon me. The girls had become brown and ragged and as shy as deer. They nursed me for weeks, for my wounds became infected. God! It seems to me that I lay there sick and helpless for years. When my brain would clear I would think of Rosa, and then the fever would rise again and I would go out of my head. Oh, they were faithful, patient people! You see, I had walked east instead of west, and now I was miles away from home, and the country between was swarming with Spaniards who were burning, destroying, killing. You wouldn't know Matanzas, O'Reilly. It is a desert.