For a moment don Benito and his captive looked at one another. Hatred and anguish at having been thus placed before his old enemy gave the former don Aníbal the impudence not to quail.
"My so-called captain," said the hacendero, "you are my prisoner."
"By the cursedest treachery," returned Pedrillo, bitterly and really burning with indignation.
"Which trick has only prevented you attempting a more shameful deed against women and children of your own race--a race that repudiates such as you, though."
"I am a volunteer frontier guard," rejoined the freelance, still more impudently. "If it were not for my band doing soldierly duty along the border, your houses, your sheep, your cattle, your families would not be safe."
"Trash!" returned don Benito. "You are an ally of the redskin murderers, not their repressor."
"This is the first time I have ever been hand in hand with them," went on Pedrillo, pleading direct to the third Mexican whom he knew to be a rich proprietor. "They have forced me to act with them. When one is among wolves, he must howl with them."
"A wolf howls with wolves, but a dog dies battling with them," retorted señor Bustamente.
"One dead with his own knife in his heart; one wounded with a pistol shot which went off in the folds of his blanket, the other safe and sound," reported the false guide.
"This Indian will bear me out that I entered on the mad enterprise reluctantly," began the bandolero in a less firm voice.
"This Indian Diego knows you of old, and I advise you not to require a character from him. In the time when you resumed your old craft of piracy and attacked me in the Gulf, this Indian and his father scuttled your steamer, effectually executing that diversion which prevented your crew from overwhelming my brave friend."
Captain Pedrillo rewarded the Mayo with a malignant look. If he had only have suspected this before when he had him in his camp. Whilst he ground his teeth and jerked his stump nervously, his judge pursued:
"I have had you decoyed out of your forces that the savages may not have the benefit of your cultured cunning. You deserve death a hundredfold for warring against Mexico, and that death should be the traitor's--that by the ignoble rope. But I have no hangman's noose here; you are going to be honoured with the soldier's fate--you shall only be shot!"