“Oh! come.  So lovely a woman should not be so blood-thirsty.  He has been punished enough.  Besides what I gave him, he’s been sent off to spend the rest of his life in some hole where he’ll have neither books nor society—­”

“It is not enough!  When a man betrays a woman, and causes her to be beaten and publicly disgraced—­it will be written in the books of the Alcalde, senor!—­and shut up in a cave to suffer the tortures of the damned in hell, he should die.”

“Well, I think he should myself, but I’m not the public executioner, and one can’t fight a duel with a priest—­”

“Senor!  Senor!  Quick!  Pull, for the love of God!”

It was Benito who spoke, and he was pushing with all his might against the stone.  “She comes—­Dona Brigida!” he cried.  “I saw her far off just now.  Stay both in there.  I will take the mustangs and hide them on the other side of the mountain and return when she is gone.  That is the best way.”

“We can all go—­”

“No, no!  She would follow; and then—­ay, Dios de mi alma!  No, it is best the senorita be there when she comes; then she will go away quietly.”

They replaced the stone.  Benito piled the brush against it, then made off with the mustangs.

“Go far,” whispered Pilar.  “Dios, if she sees you!”

“I shall not leave you again.  And even if she enter, she need not see me.  I can stand in that crevice, and I will keep quiet so long as she does not touch you.”

Dona Brigida was a half-hour reaching the cave, and meanwhile Sturges restored the lost illusions of Pilar.  Not only did he make love to her without any of the rhetorical nonsense of the caballero, but he was big and strong, and it was evident that he was afraid of nothing, not even of Dona Brigida.  The dreams of her silent girlhood swirled in her imagination, but looked vague and shapeless before this vigorous reality.  For some moments she forgot everything and was happy.  But there was a black spot in her heart, and when Sturges left her for a moment to listen, it ached for the head of the priest.  She had much bad as well as much good in her, this innocent Californian maiden; and the last week had forced an already well-developed brain and temperament close to maturity.  She vowed that she would make herself so dear to this fiery American that he would deny her nothing.  Then, her lust for vengeance satisfied, she would make him the most delightful of wives.

“She is coming!” whispered Sturges, “and she has the big vaquero with her.”

“Ay, Dios!  If she knows all, what can we do?”

“I’ve told you that I have no love of killing, but I don’t hesitate when there is no alternative.  If she sees me and declares war, and I cannot get you away, I shall shoot them both.  I don’t know that it would keep me awake a night.  Now, you do the talking for the present.”

Dona Brigida rode up to the cave and dismounted.  “Pilar!” she shouted, as if she believed that her daughter was wandering through the heart of the mountain.