Bandit Love
Page 86"Courage, sweet lady, we have but a little further to go," Cojuelo
called back to her over his shoulder.
He spoke truly. A few minutes later the party halted in a narrow,
pitch-dark ravine, and Myra was lifted from her mule.
"Take my arm, señorita, lest you stumble in the darkness on the rough
ground," said the muffled voice of El Diablo Cojuelo. "The entrance to
my mountain eyrie is narrow and unprepossessing, but I promise you that
you shall find comfort within."
He pressed the switch of an electric torch as he spoke, and guided Myra
over rocky ground to what seemed a mere cleft in a wall of rock.
allow of the passage of one person at a time," he resumed. "Here a
handful of men could defy an Army Corps, and there are other means of
entry--and other ways of escape. I give you welcome, sweet lady, to
the fortress of El Diablo Cojuelo."
Myra, again with the sensation that the whole affair was a sort of
fantastic dream, squeezed through the cleft revealed by the light of
the electric torch, advanced two or three yards, passed through another
cleft at right-angles to the first, and stopped at Cojuelo's bidding.
"You perceive, señorita, that we seem to have come to a dead end," said
of rock confronts us. It is actually a cunningly-contrived door giving
entrance to a series of caves which Nature must surely have constructed
for my use. And El Diablo Cojuelo has improved on nature. He aqui!"
With his foot he pressed some hidden spring or lever on the ground, and
a massive door swung open, revealing to the astonished eyes of Myra a
big, irregularly-shaped room that looked as if it had been hewn out of
the solid rock, a room furnished with roughly-constructed chairs and a
settee on which there were many cushions, and with many rugs on the
rocky floor. Most amazing feature of all, the place was lighted with
"I suppose I am awake and not dreaming!" exclaimed Myra, moving forward
and gazing round with wondering eyes. "This is more amazing than the
castle of Don Carlos. Are you a magician as well as a brigand?"
"Both, señorita," Cojuelo answered, as he closed the secret door, "but
there is nothing magical about it, after all. It was a simple matter
to have an electric light plant smuggled up here in sections. It was
an equally simple matter to obtain rugs and cushions from the Castillo
de Ruiz, since all the servants of Don Carlos, as I have told you, are
in my pay."