Marto Cavayso, who had been pleading with Isidro, whirled only to find the barrel of another gun thrust through the carved grill in the top of the door.
"Isidro," said Kit, "this man is to answer questions of the señora. If he is uncivil you can singe him with a bullet at your own will."
"Many thanks, señor," returned Isidro promptly. "That is a pleasant work to think of, for the talk of this shameless gentleman is poison to the air."
"You!" burst out Marto, pointing a hand at Jocasta in the corridor. "You put witchcraft of hell on me, and wall me in here with an old lunatic for guard, and now----"
Bing! A bullet from Isidro's rifle whistled past Marto's ear and buried itself in the adobe, scattering plaster and causing the prisoner to crouch back in the corner.
Jocasta regarded him as if waiting further speech, but none came.
"That is better," she said. "No one wishes to do you harm, but you need a lesson very badly. Now Marto Cavayso,--if that be your name!--why did you carry me away? Was it your own doing, or were you under orders of your General Rotil?"
"I should have let the men have you," he muttered. "I was a bewitched man, or you never would have traveled alive to see Soledad. Rotil? Do not the handsome women everywhere offer him love and comradeship? Would he risk a good man to steal a woman of whom José Perez is tired?"
"You are not the one to give judgment," said a strange voice outside the barred window.--"That I did not send you to steal women is very true, and the task I did send you for has been better done by other men in your absence."
Cavayso swore, and sat on the bed, his head in his hands. Outside the window there were voices in friendly speech, that of Clodomiro very clear as he told his grandfather the dogs did not bark but once, because some of the Mesa Blanca boys were with the general, who was wounded.
Kit closed and bolted again the door of Cavayso, feeling that the guardianship of beauty in Sonora involved a man in many awkward and entangling situations. If it was indeed Rotil----
But a curious choking moan in the corridor caused him to turn quickly, but not quickly enough.
Doña Jocasta, who had been as a reed of steel against other dangers, had risen to her feet as if for flight at sound of the voice, and she crumpled down on the floor and lay, white as a dead woman, in a faint so deep that even her heartbeat seemed stilled.