"Garvanza, ever since the new governor has been established in the pueblo, with the thieves and off-scourings of the Mexican prisons in his military force, you've swelled up like a toad," Toberman said. He moved forward a step as he spoke, his hand lifted, pointed finger driving his words into the magistrate's face. "I'm not taking orders from the governor, I'm not taking orders from you. I get my orders from this little lady right here, and from nobody else." Toberman glared around as he pronounced this defiance of the constituted authorities, hands back again on his hips in convenient reach of his pistols, a fearless man who had passed through many conflicts, to whom the imminence of another was nothing but an incident in his day. "Don Abrahan, I will pay you what this fugitive owes you, according to your own reckoning of it," Helena offered, drawing a little closer to the magistrate, closing the little group in the wide, low-walled hall. It seemed as if defiance and appeal pressed upon Don Abrahan in the same breath. "It cannot be permitted," Don Abrahan replied. He retreated a step from her advance, from her white arm outstretched in supplication for permission to do this humane service. "He is a stranger, far from home, without money, without friends," she pleaded. "I will pay it in his name--seven times the amount, Don Abrahan, if you demand it." "It cannot be adjusted in this manner," Don Abrahan refused. "Prepare quarters in this house for me and my son," he directed, turning gruffly to Doña Carlota. Doña Carlota started, her growing nervousness reaching its climax in the order, given with such affront to the hospitality of that house. She shifted the position of her candle to look past it at Helena, plainly asking instructions from one whose authority she held in greater fear than Don Abrahan's wrath. "You will know where to accommodate them," Helena said coldly. "There will be nothing more tonight, John," to Toberman, in kindness that had no taint of patronage. Toberman left the house the way he had entered, Don Abrahan's order in little prospect of being carried out, that was plain. Doña Carlota had hastened down the hall to open the guest rooms; Don Abrahan turned to the door, where he leaned out peering into the dark, as if watching Toberman. He summoned Simon in low voice, and stood there for some time talking with his teamster in hurried manner, Simon answering with short word here and there interspersed in hasty eagerness. "So, you would buy a lover!" Roberto said, his breath audible in his nostrils as he leaned to whisper the insult in Helena's ear. Helena drew away from him, her cloak gathered close, afraid of him for the fierce cruelty of his eyes. Roberto reached quickly, roughly grasping her wrist where her hand held the mantle at her throat. "There is a dagger for a heart so false!" he said.