Dispatching the letter, he ordered the band to scatter as before, appointing a meeting place a number of days hence.  After the return of the messenger, he broke camp in the middle of the night, not forgetting to add other indignities to the heavy irons already on his victim.  During the ensuing time they traveled the greater portion of each night.  To the prisoner’s questions as to where they were he received only insulting replies.  His inquiries served only to suggest other cruelties.  One night they set out unusually early, the chief saying that they would recross the river before morning, so that if the ransom was not satisfactory, the execution might take place at once.  On this night the victim was blindfolded.  After many hours of riding—­it was nearly morning when they halted—­the bandage was removed from his eyes, and he was asked if he knew the place.

“Yes, it is Agua Dulce.”

The moon shone over its white stone buildings, quietly sleeping in the still hours of the night, as over the white, silent slabs of a country churchyard.  Not a sound could be heard from any living thing.  They dismounted and gagged their prisoner.  Tying their horses at a respectable distance, they led their victim toward his home.  Don Ramon was a small man, and could offer no resistance to his captors.  They cautioned him that the slightest resistance would mean death, while compliance to their wishes carried a hope of life.

Cautiously and with a stealthy step, they advanced like the thieves they were, their victim in the iron grasp of two strong guards, while a rope with a running noose around his neck, in the hands of the chief, made their gag doubly effective.  A garden wall ran within a few feet of the rear of the house, and behind it they crouched.  The only sound was the labored breathing of their prisoner.  Hark! the cry of a child is heard within the house.  Oh, God! it is his child, his baby girl.  Listen!  The ear of the mother has heard it, and her soothing voice has reached his anxious ear.  His wife—­the mother of his children—­is now bending over their baby’s crib.  The muscles of Don Ramon’s arms turn to iron.  His eyes flash defiance at the grinning fiends who exult at his misery.  The running noose tightens on his neck, and he gasps for breath.  As they lead him back to his horse, his brain seems on fire; he questions his own sanity, even the mercy of Heaven.

When the sun arose that morning, they were far away in one of the impenetrable thickets in which the country abounded.  Since his capture Don Ramon had suffered, but never as now.  Death would have been preferable, not that life had no claims upon him, but that he no longer had hopes of liberty.  The uncertainty was unbearable.  The bandits exercised caution enough to keep all means of self-destruction out of his reach.  Hardened as they were, they noticed that their last racking of the prisoner had benumbed even hope.