"Sweet senorita, what man with a heart and eyesight could resist
falling in love with so beautiful a woman?" he responded. "Perhaps I
shall fall in love with you myself and refuse to surrender you, no
matter how great a ransom is offered. For years I have been seeking my
ideal, but not one of the many women I have captured in my time pleased
me enough to make me wish to keep her. You may be different."

Before Myra could find words to reply, the car came to a sudden stop,
the door was flung open and a gruff voice growled out a question in
Spanish which Cojuelo answered in the same language.

"We will alight now, senorita, and take a little riding exercise," he
said to Myra. "I know you are an expert horsewoman, for I was near you
this morning when you were riding with Don Carlos, and I know you will
have no difficulty in sitting a mule although you are not in riding
dress. Only mules can negotiate the paths that lead to my mountain
nest. Come!"

CHAPTER XII

Without a word, Myra stepped out, to see by the headlights of the car
that she was apparently in a mountain gorge, and to see a group of
masked and armed men standing beside some mules. She turned to look at
her captor as she reached the front of the car, and found that Cojuelo
was wearing what looked like a monk's cowl which completely covered his
face, and which accounted for his muffled voice. She saw that he was
tall, but that was all.

Cojuelo snapped out some orders, and a soberly-dressed, elderly man,
wearing no mask and carrying in his arms a number of parcels, appeared
out of the darkness and got into the car, which turned and sped away.

"Bien!" exclaimed Cojuelo, as the motor disappeared. "Everything is
working according to plan. In the unlikely event of the car being
stopped, it is found to contain Garcilaso, Don Carlos's steward,
returning from doing some marketing in the city. And who would guess
that the fair senorita had been spirited away in one of Don Carlos's
own cars?"

"So some of Don Carlos's servants are in your pay?" exclaimed Myra.

"They are all in my pay, sweet lady, and every man knows it is as much
as his life is worth to betray me," Cojuelo answered, with a triumphant
laugh. "But we waste time, and must not take the risk, remote as it
is, of being seen. Let me assist you to mount."

He picked Myra up in his arms and swung her up without any apparent
effort on to the saddle of a mule which one of the men