“Senor,” she panted, “Senor Commandante ...  I must speak with you at once!”

Hull rose.  “My dear young lady”—­he regarded her with patent consternation—­“my dear young lady ... w-what is wrong?”

She was painfully aware of her bedraggled state, the whirlwind lack of ceremony with which she had propelled herself into his presence.  Suddenly words failed her, she was conscious that an arm stretched toward her as she swayed.  Next she lay upon a couch in an inner chamber, the commander, in his blue-and-gold-braid stiffness bending over her, gravely anxious.

She rose at once, ignoring his protesting gesture.

“I—­I fainted?” she asked perplexedly.  Hull nodded.  “Something excited you.  A fight in the street below.  A man was stabbed—­”

“Oh!” The white face of the bearded stranger sprang into her memory, “Is he dead?”

“No, but badly hurt, I fancy,” said the Commander.  “They have taken him to the City Hotel.”

Desperately, she forced herself to speak.  “I have come, senor, to ask a pardon for my brother.  He is very dear to me—­and to my mother”—­she clasped her hands and held them toward him supplicatingly.  “Senor, if Benito should be captured—­you will have mercy?”

The commander regarded her with puzzled interest.  “Who is Benito, little one?”

“His name is Windham.  My father was a gring—­Americano, Commandante.”

Hull frowned.  “An American ... fighting against his country?” he said sharply.

“Ah, sir”—­the girl came closer in her earnestness—­“he does not fight against the United States ... only against robbers who would hide behind its flag.”  In her tone there was the outraged indignation of a suffering people.  “Horse thieves, cattle robbers.”

“Hush,” said Hull, “you must not speak thus of American officials.  Their seizures, I am told, were unavoidable—­for military needs alone.”

“You have never heard our side,” the girl spoke bitterly.  “Was it military need that filched two hundred of our blooded horses from the ranches?  Was it military need that robbed my ailing mother of her pet, the mare Diablo?  Was it military need that gave our finest steeds to your Alcalde for his pleasure, that enabled half a dozen false officials to recruit their stables from our caponeras and sell horses in the open market?” Her eyes blazed.  “Senor, it was tyranny and theft, no less.  Had I been a man, like Benito, I, too, should have ridden with Sanchez.”

“Can you prove these things?” asked the Commander, sternly.

“Si, senor,” said Inez quickly.  “It is well known hereabouts.  Do not take my word,” she smiled, “I am a woman—­a Spaniard, on my mother’s side.  Ask your own countrymen—­Samuel Brannan, Nathan Spear, William Leidesdorff.”

Hull pulled at his chin reflectively.  “Something of this sort I have already heard,” he said, “but I believed it idle gossip....  If your brother had come to me, instead of riding with the enemy—­”