Bandit Love

She could hear Don Carlos shouting to her to stop, and fancied she

could hear him in close pursuit as she sped down the steep path. Again

she came to the edge of a ravine, and she had to creep cautiously along

the edge of a rough and treacherous path.

Glancing over her shoulder after she had crossed the most perilous

part, Myra saw that Don Carlos was now close behind her, and that she

must inevitably be overtaken. Almost she succumbed to a mad impulse to

hurl herself to destruction into the ravine, but in the moment of

hesitation before taking the fatal plunge she heard the sound of many

voices ascending.

A great boulder blocked her view of the mountainside immediately below

her, but on rounding the rock she saw, within a hundred yards of her, a

company of men in uniform advancing in straggling order up the

mountain. Myra cried out breathlessly, some of the men saw her and

shouted excitedly and one who seemed to be an officer came running

towards her and reached her side just as Don Carlos appeared behind her.

"Myra, Myra!" shouted Don Carlos. "Do not----"

Myra did not hear the rest of his shout. Excitedly she clutched the

arm of the officer of the Guardia Civil.

"Save me! Save me!" she gasped. "That man is El Diablo Cojuelo! Don

Carlos is El Diablo Cojuelo! Do you understand? Don't let him take me

back."

"Yes, señorita," said the officer quickly in English. "I understand.

You alla right now from El Diablo Cojuelo."

"You do not understand," gasped Myra half-frantically, pointing at Don

Carlos, now only a few yards away from her. "That man is El Diablo

Cojuelo. Don Carlos de Ruiz is El Diablo Cojuelo. Arrest him!"

It seemed to her that as she spoke the words denouncing Don Carlos the

whole world went suddenly pitch dark, and she felt herself falling,

falling through space. What actually happened was that she fainted,

and the officer of the Civil Guard was just in time to catch her ere

she fell.

She recovered consciousness to find a swarthy, weather-beaten man

supporting her head and holding a water-bottle to her lips, and to see

many dark eyes regarding her with sympathetic curiosity. Until her

brain cleared she could not realise where she was and what had been

happening, and she felt horribly scared. Then she heard the voice of

Don Carlos and she remembered everything.

"Don't let him take me back!" she cried, sitting up. "I tell you, he

is El Diablo Cojuelo!"