Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/152

“I don’t want. to,” said Kate.

“You don’t want to, Niña? Ah! Entonces! Entonces, Niña, I will tell Ezequiel to sleep here outside your door, with his pistol. He has a pistol, and he will sleep outside your door, and you can leave your shutter open, for air in the hot night. Ah, Niña, we poor women, we need a man and a pistol. We ought not to be left alone all the night. We are afraid, the children are afraid. And imagine it, that there was a robber trying to open the bolt of your door! Imagine it to yourself No, Niña, we will tell Ezequiel at mid-day.”

Ezequiel came striding proudly in, at mid-day. He was a wild, shy youth, very erect and proud, and half savage. His voice was breaking, and had a queer resonance.

He stood shyly while the announcement was being made to him. Then he looked at Kate with flashing black eyes, very much the man to the rescue.

“Yes Yes!” he said. “I will sleep here on the corridor. Don’t have any fear. I shall have my pistol.”

He marched off, and returned with the pistol, an old long-barrelled affair.

“It has five he said, showing the weapon. “If you open the door in the night, you must say a word to me first. Because if I see anything move, I shall fire five shots. Pst! Pst!”

She saw by the flash of his eyes what satisfaction it would give him to fire five shots at something moving in the night. The thought of shots being fired at him gave him not the least concern.

“And Niña,” said Juana, “If you come home late, after the light is out, you must call Ezequiel! Because if not, Brumm! Brumm!—and who knows who will be killed!”

Ezequiel slept on a straw mat on the brick verandah outside Kate’s door, rolled up in his blanket, and with the pistol at his side. So she could leave her shutter open far air. And the first night she was kept awake once more by his fierce snoring. Never had she heard such a tremendous resonant sound! What a chest that boy must have! It was sound from some strange, savage other world. The noise kept her awake, but there was something in it which she liked. Some sort of wild strength.