A person under ordinary conditions would have forgotten the incident in five minutes, but this was an event in the life of the lonely captive. Save his encounter with de Armijo, he could not recall another of so much importance in many months. He stayed at the loophole a long time, but he did not see the figures again nor anything else living. Once, about a month before, he had caught a glimpse of a deer there, and it had filled him with excitement, because to see even a deer was a great thing, but this was a greater. He remained at the loophole until the rocks began to redden with the morning sun, but his little landscape remained as it had ever been, the same rocks, the same pines or cedars--which, in Heaven’s name, were they?--and the same cactus. Then he walked slowly back to his cot. The chains were lying on the floor beside it, and he knew that, in time, they would be put on him again, but he was resolved not to abate his independence a particle. Nor would he defer in any way to de Armijo. If he came again he would speak his opinion of him to his face, let him do what he would. There was proud and stubborn blood in every vein of the Bedfords. John Bedford’s grandfather had been one of the most noted of Kentucky’s pioneers and Indian fighters, and on his mother’s side, too, there was a strain of tenacious New England. By some possible chance he might be able to return de Armijo’s blow. He drew the cover over his body and fell into a sleep from which he was awakened by the slovenly soldier with his breakfast. The man did not speak while John ate, and John was glad of it. He, too, had nothing to say, and he wished to be left to himself. When the man left he lay down on the cot again and slept until nearly noon. Then de Armijo came a second time. He had no apologies whatever for the manner in which he had struck down an unarmed prisoner, but was hard and sneering. "I merely tell you," he said, "that you lost your last chance yesterday. The offer will not be repeated." John said not a word, but gazed at him so steadily that the Mexican’s swarthy face flushed a little. He hesitated, as if he would say something, but evidently thought better of it, and went out. That night he had a fever from his wounded head and the exertion that he had made in standing so long at the loophole. He became delirious, and when he emerged from his delirium a little weazened old Indian woman was sitting by the side of his cot. She had kindly and pitying eyes, and John exclaimed, in a weak but joyous voice: "Catarina!" "Poor boy," she said, "I have watched you one day and one night." "Where have you been all the time before?" he asked in the Mexican dialect that he had learned.