Bandit Love by Juanita Savage (brene brown rising strong txt) 📖

stumble or a false step on the part of the animal would have meant certain death.

Yet Myra was conscious of no sense of fear now, and the dangers only made her pulse beat faster and stirred her blood. But it was no easy task riding a mule along precipitous paths and keeping her seat while slithering down slopes, clad as she was in only a filmy evening frock and a fur coat, and she cried out in protest at last:

"How much further, Señor Cojuelo? I cannot sit this ungainly brute much longer in these clothes."

"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.

"You will notice that this entrance to my lair is only wide enough to 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 the bandit, flashing the light about. "What appears to be a solid wall 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 electricity and warmed by an electric radiator.

"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."

He strode forward to the table and touched a bell, and almost immediately an ancient woman with a wrinkled monkey-like, nut-brown face, tanned by wind and weather, appeared through an opening concealed by a curtain in the further wall. She was obviously of great age, but her eyes were bright and sparkling with intelligence, and she was active in her movements.

"This is Mother Dolores, who will attend you," Cojuelo explained, after giving the woman some instructions in her native tongue. "She has a change of clothing and refreshments in readiness for you. I will leave you in her charge while I attend to the disposal of my other captives."

He disappeared through the aperture in the wall, and Mother Dolores, after inspecting Myra appraisingly and admiringly, gabbling away in Spanish idioma meanwhile, indicated to the fair prisoner that she wished her to accompany her.

She led the way through a regular maze of crooked passages, and Myra saw that Cojuelo's mountain lair was a strange freak of nature, probably the result of a volcanic upheaval or an earthquake in some prehistoric age. It was a series of caves connected with fissures, a sort of irregular honeycomb of rock.

"Apartiamento—dormitorio," were the only words Myra understood of the flood Dolores let loose as she ushered her into one of the cave-rooms, and by pantomime indicated that she wished Myra to undress.

The rocky walls of the cave-bedroom were hidden beneath hangings of moire silk, the floor was thickly carpeted, and the place was equipped with an oak bedstead and some small pieces of roughly-constructed furniture. But what made Myra gasp in amazement was to see her own silk dressing-gown and the nightie she had worn the night before lying on the eiderdown bedspread, together with other garments, while on the primitive dressing-table stood her dressing-case.

"Incredible!" she exclaimed. "These things were in my bed-room at the
Castillo de Ruiz only an hour or two ago!"

"Si, si, señorita, El Castillo de Ruiz," said Dolores, nodding her head and showing her toothless gums in a grin. "Maravilloso! Etra vez el bueno maestro Cojuelo."

"Cojuelo boasted that all the servants of Don Carlos are in his pay, and it must be true," thought Myra. "These things must have been taken from my room before the raid, and the servants probably knew El Diablo Cojuelo was going to kidnap me…. Surely I have nothing to fear from a man who takes such trouble to ensure that I shall be comfortable? And yet…"

Dolores scuffled out, still gabbling unintelligibly in Spanish, but reappeared almost at once with a jug of hot water. She stood watching Myra with mingled curiosity and admiration as her fair charge washed after leisurely undressing, then put on her chic night-dress and dressing-gown, and a filmy, attractive boudoir cap.

"Señor Cojuelo said something about refreshments," said Myra, hoping she would make Mother Dolores understand, and trying to remember some of the Spanish words she had learned. "I should like a cup of coffee—café—or a glass of vino, and a cigarette—cigarillo. Entender?"

"Si, si, señorita," answered Dolores. "Café, vino, aguardiene, cigarillo, Todo pronto."

She opened the door and made signals to Myra that she wished her to return with her to the outer apartment, at the same time letting loose another torrent of words.

"Perhaps meals in bed-rooms are charged extra!" Myra remarked, and laughed at the idea.

She was conscious of no sensation of actual fear, but she was curious and apprehensive as to how El Diablo Cojuelo would behave, remembering his reputation and his hint that he might fall in love with her and refuse to surrender her no matter how great the ransom offered.

Still smiling, Myra slid her bare feet into her bedroom slippers and accompanied Mother Dolores back through the maze of crooked, rocky passages to the outer apartment.

"Comer e heber e fumar, señorita," said Dolores, indicating a tray set on a stool close by the electric heater. On the tray stood a steaming jug of coffee, a flagon of cognac, a plate of biscuits, a cup and saucer, and a silver cigarette-box.

"More magic!" commented Myra, as Dolores set a chair for her and poured out a glass of cognac which she insisted upon Myra drinking at once. Then she poured out coffee, gabbled something about the "bueno maestro," and withdrew.

Left alone, Myra sipped the fragrant coffee and looked about her with interest.

"This is certainly brigandage up to date!" she reflected. "I wonder what manner of man El Diablo Cojuelo is?"

A minute or two later she heard a movement behind her and glanced over her shoulder expecting to see Mother Dolores, but saw instead the hooded figure of El Diablo Cojuelo. Instinctively, she drew her silken dressing-gown closer around her and started to her feet.

"I am sorry if I startled you, señorita," said Cojuelo. "It is a delightful surprise to find you like this."

"Dolores seemed to be insisting that I must come here for my coffee," explained Myra, recovering her composure.

"I instructed Madre Dolores to ask you to do me the honour of returning here to have a talk with me before you retired, señorita, forgetting that you do not understand much Spanish," responded Cojuelo. "I hardly hoped to find you in négligé. You are a vision of beauty to ravish the heart of any man, sweet lady."

"Thanks for the compliment, señor," said Myra coldly. "If I had understood you wished to talk to me, I should not have prepared to retire. Surely anything you have to say will keep until to-morrow. Meanwhile, I shall be thankful for a cigarette."

"Pardon!" exclaimed Cojuelo, turning quickly to pick up the silver cigarette-box from the table, and proffering it. "Your favourite brand, you perceive. You will give El Diablo Cojuelo credit, I hope, for making provision for your comfort."

"You certainly seem to be something of a magician," commented Myra, as she helped herself to a cigarette and accepted a light. "Perhaps you are in league with the Devil, and that is why you are known as El Diablo Cojuelo! I should be interested to know how you managed to get some of my clothes here, together with my toilet requisites."

"That was not the work of the devil, señorita," the hooded figure answered, with a muffled laugh, "El Diablo Cojuelo thinks of everything, and had made his preparations in advance. Did I not tell you all the servants of El Castillo de Ruiz were in my pay? It was a simple matter, therefore, to have some of your things smuggled out of the castle before the raid. Pray be seated, señorita."

He waved his hand invitingly towards the couch which was drawn up close to the electric heater, and Myra, reflecting that it was in keeping with the rest of the fantastic, dream-like adventure that she, clad only in a nightdress and dressing-gown, should be talking to a hooded bandit in an electrically-lighted room in the heart of a mountain, seated herself.

"I suppose I should thank you for being so thoughtful," she remarked, with a tinge of irony in her sweet voice. "Am I to understand that even the English-speaking maid at the Castillo de Ruiz is in your pay?"

"Even she, señorita, and I reproach myself—I who have boasted that I think of everything—for not having kidnapped her at the same time as you, so that we should have had no language difficulty such as has occurred with Madre Dolores. If you wish it, I will kidnap her to-morrow."

"Please don't trouble, señor. I can't believe she is in your pay. She seemed afraid and crossed herself when she mentioned your name. You might frighten her to death. Incidentally, do you wear your disguise all the time, even when you are safe here in your mountain lair? Do you look so much like a devil that you are afraid to show your face?"

She looked challengingly at the hooded figure of her captor as she asked the questions. His cowl had two holes cut for the eyes and a slit at the mouth, and she was wondering what manner of face it concealed.

"The señorita pays me the compliment of wishing to see me without disguise!" exclaimed Cojuelo. "Sweet lady, are you not afraid you may fall in love with your captor?"

"I think I can take the risk," retorted Myra drily.

"It is more than a risk," rejoined Cojuelo, "but I will discard my disguise with pleasure. Behold El Diablo Cojuelo!"

He flung off his cowl and robe, and Myra sprang to her feet with a cry of amazement and her hands went convulsively to her breast. For she found herself looking into the smiling and triumphant eyes of Don Carlos de Ruiz.

CHAPTER XIII

"Don Carlos!" she gasped. "You! But I don't understand."

"I am El Diablo Cojuelo, dear Myra," explained Don Carlos, obviously enjoying the sensation he had created. "I feared you had guessed my secret."

"So the whole affair, I take it, is an elaborate practical joke?" Myra queried after a pause,