It was in vain that he sought to recover the plenitude of his judgment. Nothing but the extreme stubbornness which was his racial characteristic, enabled him to master the strange emotions which he experienced, but, if he had lacked for daring and impulse of pride not to show the white feather before a man who he esteemed near enough of his kin to constitute a judge, this determined him to impress favourably at any cost.
While he was fortifying his will, Oliver had completed the preparations for a flight, taking it for granted that his obligation was not discharged till, this time, the English gentleman owned he was perfectly safe.
They mounted, and gradually increasing the pace, went on for upwards of three hours without exchanging one syllable or tightening the rein.
They kept the source stream of the Yaqui on the north, racing through woodland where the guide eluded the branches with miraculous dexterity, and selected "lanes" through which his companion could ride, with lowered head and knees pressed in, without too much risk of an accident like Absalom's.
About ten o'clock they came out on the plain, broken with isolated wooded patches. The night was clear, warm and starry. The cold and pale spring moon shed a saddening light, confusing the ground objects, and impressing the prominences of the landscape with an aspect both fantastic and solemn.
Soon there loomed up a definite form on the horizon. A light gleamed and then glimmered in the midst of a thicket of tulipwood and magnolias. Towards this beacon Oregon Ol. directed their way.
"We are running rusty," he said, "hyar we kin ile up."
Soon the chaparral began to "hedge" away on both sides, and a rather large building gladdened the sight of the Englishman. Oliver showed no tokens of being similarly charmed.
This edifice, built of mud bricks, sunbaked, and whitened with limewash, was pierced with six mere loophole windows high up on the front; it ranked midway between the ranch and the hacienda, that is, the shanty and the grange house. Like all Mexican dwellings, it had a broad verandah sustained by pillars before the doorway, and a sodded flat roof in the Italian mode. All around it was a defiant wall in live cactus.