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Two hours brought the party to Pedro's Cup, named for a Mexican desperado who had once held the sheriff at bay there. The Cup was a great amphitheater, cut out in the hills, its floor smooth and packed hard, dotted with sagebrush and greasewood.
He forced himself to speak equably. "Lor'! That's no great matter. Pedro's not much use here. The business my governor's after can be settled by ten minutes' rational talk with with another gentleman. Quiet talk!" He looked up suddenly with hard, phosphorescent eyes. Heyst didn't move a muscle. Ricardo congratulated himself on having left his revolver behind.
How could I? My dear has no money to give wicked men, and I knew the dear God would take me back to her when He saw fit. As He did, indeed. For it must have been He who put it into Pedro's heart to seek the cave just when I needed him most. Only the Lord could see through all that darkness and lead the shepherd by that crooked way."
Quite so: quite so." "You admit that. Then you will no doubt restore the mummy to me." By this time the drift of Don Pedro's observations entirely reached the understanding of the scientist, and he dropped the document he was reading to leap to his feet. "Restore the mummy to you!" he gasped. "Why, it is mine."
Once again the creature was lifted and slung so that he lay across Pedro's saddle a blurred, dingy, wet pulp. Vengeance had come and gone. The man and the horse were motionless. Around them, silence seemed to gather like a witness. "If you are dead," said the Virginian, "I am glad of it." He stood looking down at Balaam and Pedro, prone in the middle of the open tableland.
But alack! as is the way with all beauty, it is but short-lived. The end of their peaceful passion came with the announcement of Pedro's return from the Court, now at Aragon. Isabella Angelica, history relates, was beside herself with misery. Enrique also was considerably upset. Together the doomed couple arranged a plan of escape.
She alone sheds a ray of light on Pedro's memory, only her love can save him from the execration of posterity. When she died rich and poor alike mourned her, and the king was inconsolable. He honoured her with pompous obsequies, and throughout the kingdom ordered masses to be sung for the rest of her soul.
He lifted the saddle on the horse's back. "Come, Pedro," said he. "Come, Pedro!" mocked Balaam. There followed a little silence. "No, sir," mumbled Shorty, with his head under Pedro's belly, busily cinching. "A hundred dollars is bottom figures." Balaam, in his turn, now duly performed some professional laughing, which was noted by Shorty under the horse's belly.
In reality the depth was not so great; yet to anyone within it escape was impossible without help from above. Into this hole Ferd peered, holding the lantern so that its rays fell straight downward, and calling in a jeering voice: "Is the 'captain' ready yet?" "Oh, Ferd! good Ferd! Please, please let me out!" answered a voice that thrilled old Pedro's heart with joy. "All right. The money first."
"Yes, it was meant to kill," was Pedro's quiet rejoinder; "but, thank God, I had a friend near who meant to save, and he turned the knife aside in time. Sit down now, I'll tell you how it happened.
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