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Eleven o'clock; the white owls were at their boldest, hooting lugubrious serenades to the answering wolves. Pepillo was at the cabin door, trying the latch. Mex heard the sound, got up, and unfastened the bolts. "Sh!" said she, and giving him the candle, pointed to the back room; then drowsily resumed her nest on the buffalo robe.
Pepillo, who was the helmsman of the piroque, isn't dead, and he would shoot or stab me on sight. Vexeranno is alive yet, too, and he is one of the three who planned to do it." "Speak no more of the horrible affair, my friend. We were none of us gainers by it. You know how much I lost. But I saved you from arrest, and you ought to be grateful. Why are you here?"
This done, he shuffled his feet slightly to apprise the half-conscious guardian of the ominous house that he was obeying her orders, and vanished in the rear darkness. The dead hush of sleep now reigned over the place. So it seemed, but the stealthy Pepillo was wide awake. He remained motionless, breathless, hidden in the gloom of the second cabin.
A man scrambled up the bank in response to the call. The two Spaniards sat upon the bank of the bayou, and held a long consultation in their native language. It was eleven o'clock when Pepillo, alias Turlipe, arose to go back to the tavern. "You needn't come along, Vexeranno; I can do the job without help. Only stay here and wait. Have the skiff ready to carry us down stream as fast as we can row.
The third time is the charm. Not your kind of charm, Mex, but one that acts quicker." "What charm?" asked Mex, who had gone behind the bar, and was busy with bottles and cups. She decanted some drops into a flask. "What charm! Copper-cheeks! You don't recollect how I dosed Pepillo that night!" "Yes, that night me save your life. Me your wife then! Me kill dandy?" Palafox chuckled at the question.
"I say that if you wish to go, do so," repeated Dona Perfecta, with admirable serenity, while her countenance expressed the most complete and unaffected sincerity. "No, senora: I do not wish to go." "So much the better; I think you are right. You are more tranquil here, notwithstanding the suspicions with which you are tormenting yourself. Poor Pepillo!
Pepillo took the feeble light; nodded, but did not immediately follow directions. He set the candle down upon the floor in front of the bar, so that its faint flicker, unobserved by the woman, made objects barely visible in the room.
"You have enemies in Orbajosa, you say? Some one wishes to revenge himself upon you? Come, Pepillo, you have lost your senses. The reading of those books in which they say that we have for ancestors monkeys or parrots has turned your brain."
I may come back any time in the night." While Pepillo, squatting on the ground beside the sluggish estuary, imparted to his accomplice the details of a bloody design, Palafox in the tavern waxed more and more violent. He menaced an imaginary foe with clinched fist. Mex tried to soothe him. He sat for a while in sulky quiet.
She raised her drowsy head, and through the mass of sable hair tangling over her half-open eyes, peered out from behind the shelter of the bar. Pepillo had drawn a poignard and was tip-toeing toward the sleeping captain. Mex gave a catamount cry. Palafox started up, pistol in hand, none too soon to avoid the deadly blade of the assassin. "Palafox!" This one word was all Pepillo uttered.
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