“But yes—­most assuredly yes.  I risk much to save your life.  But you must go to meet me, Senor.  Is a man’s life not worth all to him?  So?  Sign, and you live.”

The eyes of the men had fastened—­the fierce, black, eager ones of the Mexican and the steelly gray ones of the Anglo-Saxon.  There was the rigor of battle in that gaze, the grinding of rapier on rapier.  Gordon was a prisoner in the hands of his enemy.  He lay exhausted from a terrible beating.  That issues of life and death hung in the balance a child might have guessed.  But victory lay with the white man.  The lids of Menendez fell over sullen, angry eyes.

“You are a fool, Senor.  We go to prison for no man who is our enemy.  Pouf!  When the hour comes I snuff out your life like that.”  And Pablo snapped his fingers airily.

“Maybe—­and maybe not.  I figure on living to be an old man.  Tell you what I’ll do, Menendez.  Turn me loose and I’ll forget about our little rumpus last night.  I’d ought to send you to the pen, but I’ll consent to forego that pleasure.”

Sulkily Pablo turned away.  What could one do with a madman who insisted on throwing his life away?  The young Mexican was not a savage, though the barbaric strain in his wild lawless blood was still strong.  He did not relish the business of killing in cold blood even the man he hated.

“If you kill me you’ll hang,” went on Gordon composedly.  “You’ll never get away with it.  Your own friends will swear your neck into a noose.  Your partner Sebastian—­you’ll excuse me if I appear familiar, but I don’t know the gentleman’s other name—­will turn State’s evidence to try to save his own neck.  But I reckon he’ll have to climb the ladder, too.”

Sebastian pushed aside his companion angrily and took the American by the throat.

“Por Dios, I show you.  If I hang I hang—­but you——­” His muscular fingers tightened till the face of his enemy grew black.  But the eyes—­the steady, cool, contemptuous eyes—­still looked into his defiantly.

Pablo dragged his accomplice from the bedside.  The time might come for this, but it was not yet.

It had been a close thing for Gordon.  If those lean, strong fingers had been given a few seconds more at his throat they would have snapped the cord of life.  But gradually the distorted face resumed its natural hue as the coughing, strangling man began to breathe again.

“Your—­friend—­is—­impetuous,” Dick suggested to Pablo as soon as he could get the words out one at a time.

“He will shake the life out of you as a terrier does that of a rat,” Pablo promised vindictively.

“There’s no fun—­in being strangled, as you’ll both—­find out later,” the prisoner retorted whimsically but with undaunted spirit.

Sebastian had left the room.  At the expiration of half an hour he returned with a tray, upon which were two plates with food and two cups of steaming coffee.  The Mexicans ate their ham and their frijoles and drank their coffee.  The prisoner they ignored.