"Yes he is. And I put him there." He left her to what he saw was her belief that it was because of the Kirby affair. "You'll see when you get back. And I'll put you there, too, if I care to. The best chance you have is to do as I tell you." She was silent, but the stubbornness was going fast. She broke off a bunch of little pink blossoms and rolled it in her hands. "Your best chance for keeping out of jail, too," he insisted, "is to keep on the right side of me. _Sabe?_ Now what I want to know is, what part Stone has in all this." He did not know what part any one had had in it, as a matter of fact, for he had failed in all attempts to make Lawton talk, in the two days he had had before leaving the post. "Why don't you ask him?" said Mrs. Lawton, astutely. "Because I prefer to ask you, that's why--and to make you answer, too." He sat down cross-legged on the ground, facing her. "I've got plenty of time, my dear woman. I can stop here all day if you can, you know," he assured her. Afterward he made a painting of her as she had sat there, in among the rocks and the scrub growth, aged, bent, malevolent, and in garments that were picturesque because they were rags. He called it the Sibyl of the Sierra Madre. And, like the Trojan, he plied her with questions--not of the future, but of the past. "Well," he said, "are you going to answer me?" "Didn't you find out from him?" she asked. He changed his position leisurely, stretching out at full length and resting his head on his hand by way of gaining time. Then he told her that it was not until after he had caught and landed her husband that he had discovered that Stone was in it. "Who told you he was?" she asked. "Never mind all that. I'm here to question, not to be questioned. Now listen to me." And he went on to point out how she could not possibly get away from him and the troops until they were across the border, and that once there, it lay with him to turn her over to the authorities or to set her free. "You can take your choice, of course. I give you my word--and I think you are quite clever enough to believe me--that if you do not tell me what I want to know about Stone, I will land you where I've landed your husband; and that if you do, you shall go free after I've done with you. Now I can wait until you decide to answer," and he rolled over on his back, put his arms under his head, and gazed up at the jewel-blue patch of sky. There was a long pause. A hawk lighted on a point of rock and twinkled its little eyes at them. Two or three squirrels whisked in and out. Once a scout came by and stood looking at them, then went on, noiselessly, up the mountain side. "What do you want to know for?" asked the woman, at length. He repeated that he was not there to be questioned, and showed her that he meant it by silence. Presently she began again, "Well, he wasn't in it at all. Stone wasn't."