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This fomenting nucleus into which he and Barlow had come was, he estimated, foredoomed to failure and worse; one fine day Ruiz Rios and Fernando Escobar and their outlaw followings would find themselves with their backs to an adobe wall and their faces set toward a line of rifles. And Zoraida Castelmar had best think upon that, too.
So Betty and Rios went out and for a little while Jim and Bruce were left alone. "Bruce, old man," said Kendric, "let's come down to earth. Put your sentimental heart in your pocket and use your brains a while. You know me well enough to know that I won't lie to you. Will you listen to me?" "Yes. But tell me only what you know, not what you surmise. What do you know against Zoraida Castelmar?"
Everyone in the border town had known of his letter at the postoffice; further, it was not in the least unlikely that Señorita Castelmar would know of the letter when it was dropped into the slot at the Mexican postoffice.
"Si, Señor Capitan. It is Ramorez. And the luck is fine!" "You have her?" Escobar's tone was exultant. "Just outside. Sancho is bringing her. I am here for orders. Where shall we take her?" "Here. Into the house. Señorita Castelmar knows everything and is with us." Ramorez swung back up into the saddle and spurred away, gone into the darkness under the trees toward the gate.
Men like Barlow and Bruce West may let you sing their souls to sleep for a little; look out when they wake up!" She laughed softly. "I think that all along you have doubted my power," she said, her eyes steady on his. "Are you beginning to see that Zoraida Castelmar is a girl to reckon with? You have said that the great things I attempt are beyond me; have I failed in anything I have tried?"
The other impression was no true sensation in that it was registered by none of the five senses; a true sensation only if in truth there is in man a subtle sixth sense, uncatalogued but vital. It was the old uncanny certainty that at last eyes, the eyes of none other than Zoraida Castelmar, were bent searchingly on him.
Afterwards Kendric realized that all the time while he was racing madly up and down, peering into cabin and galley and nook and corner, there had been a clear image standing uppermost in his mind; the picture of Zoraida Castelmar as she had stood and looked at him when she had said, "I have put a charm and a spell over your life."
If these men quarreled, how would it affect him? Quarrel they would, soon or late, he knew. For both were truculent and in the looks he had seen pass between them there was no friendship. Two rebellious spirits held in check by the will of Zoraida Castelmar. But now Zoraida was away. Then for the moment he forgot them and his conjectures.
As before Charlie was at the wheel while Nigger Ben was listening to instructions from Barlow aft of the cabin. The voices came faint against the gulf wind to Kendric. The words he did not hear since all of his mental force was bent to determine what it was that gave him that uncanny feeling of eyes, the eyes of Zoraida Castelmar, in the dark. This time he was guarded in his actions.
Kendric told Barlow what he had learned during the evening; how the walls were sentinelled and how at the present moment under the same roof with them was an American girl, held for ransom. "And, according to Escobar," he concluded, watching his old friend's face, "the trick is put over with the connivance of Miss Castelmar.
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