Daughter of the Dons

"He is a madman," the Spaniard murmured.

"Or devil," added Sebastian significantly. "You will see, señor, he will come out safe and unharmed."

But he did not come out at all, though the minutes dragged themselves away one after another.

"I'm going after him," cried Davis, starting forward.

But Don Manuel flung strong arms about him, and threw the miner back into the hands of the Mexicans.

"Hold him," he cried in Spanish.

"Let me go. Let me go, I say!" cried the miner, struggling with those who detained him.

But Pesquiera had already gone to the rescue. He, too, plunged through the smoke. Blinded unable to breathe, he groped his way across the door lintel into the blazing hut.

The heat was intense. Red tongues of flame licked out from all sides toward him. But he would not give up, though he was gasping for breath and could not see through the dense smoke.

A sweep of wind brushed the smoke aside for an instant, and he saw the body of his enemy lying on the floor before him. He stooped, tried to pick it up, but was already too far gone himself.

Almost overcome, he sank to his knees beside Gordon. Close to the floor the air was still breathable. He filled his lungs, staggered to his feet, and tried to drag the unconscious man across the threshold with him.

A hundred fiery dragons sprang unleashed at him. The heat, the stifling smoke were more than flesh and blood could endure. He stumbled over a fallen chair, got up and plowed forward again, still with that dead weight in his arms; collapsed again, and yet once more pulled himself to his feet by the sheer strength of the dogged will in him.

So, at last, like a drunken man, he reeled into safety, the very hair and clothes of the man on fire from the inferno he had just left.

A score of eager hands were ready to relieve him of his burden, to support his lurching footsteps. Two of them were the strong brown hands of the woman he loved more than any other on earth, the woman who had galloped into sight just in time to see him come staggering from that furnace with the body of the man who was his hated rival. It was her soft hands that smothered the fire in his hair, that dragged the burning coat from his back.

He smiled wanly, murmured "Valencia," and fainted in her arms.

Gordon clutched in his stiffened fingers a tin box blistered by the heat.