Tiburcio shrugged his shoulders, a silent comment on the tragedy from its beginning to this, its end. He threw the match away and arose, but Rodrigo still knelt, leaning over her, holding the poor battered head in his hands, half lifting it, and trying to look again into those eyes through the darkness. He would touch the matted hair, as if to caress, not knowing what he did, and each time he would jerk back his hand at the uncanny, sticky feeling. Roving thus, his fingers touched an ivory cross, and closed over it. With no present consciousness of his act, he placed the symbol in his jacket, over his breast. Tiburcio touched him on the shoulder. "I'll go now, and bring her father," he said. "Yes," returned the other vaguely, stumbling to his feet. "It's going to kill the old man," murmured Tiburcio, "or--God, if it should _not_ kill him! He is a coward, but once he slapped you, Rodrigo, for so much as looking at her. And now, the Virgin help--may the Virgin help whoever's concerned in this!--But here, you must go, do you hear?" "Yes." "Then go, go!" "Yes," said Rodrigo again, moving slowly away. "By the river, remember. You'll find your horse there." "Captain Maurel's, the fine black one?" "Yes, I slipped it out of the stables for you." "The fine black one?" "Yes, yes, hombre!" "And--and she never--she never saw--how magnifico I look on--on that fine black horse." He was still muttering as he reeled and staggered down the hill. When he was gone, and no alarm of sentinels rang out, Tiburcio took off his serape and laid it over the dark blot on the stones. Then he too stole away, to tell her father. CHAPTER XXI THE RED MONGREL "Be this the whetstone of your sword; let grief Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it." --_Macbeth_. "Where," inquired Din Driscoll, with a benevolent interest in their doing the thing right, "is the judge advocate?" Colonel Miguel Lopez resented what he took for a patronizing concern. It festered his complacency, for his was the code of the bowed neck to those above and the boot-tip for those below. Luckily for him, he did not strike the helpless prisoner. He turned to his judge's bench instead, which was none other than the frayed and stately sofa of honor from the hacienda sala, deemed requisite to his dignity. The satin upholstery contrasted grotesquely with the adobe walls. Pungent tallow dips lighted the granary to a dull yellow, and mid the sluggish tobacco clouds were a shrinking prisoner in clerical black, and the mildly interested prisoner in gray, and red uniforms surrounding.