Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/272



ON GERONIMO had been beaten hideously. He lay bound to the back of his horse, his face against its neck, as he evidently had been placed to receive the punishment that had been applied by unsparing hands. Yet not altogether unsparing, for Don Geronimo still lived, although he had not been spared in mercy, but in calculative cruelty, that he might be conscious of the end most dreaded by all living things.

It seemed that a thousand blows had fallen on his back, stripped naked to the waist. He was a pulp of purple, horribly gashed flesh. Blood from his wounds had drenched the horse's sides and stained the dry earth which had drunk it greedily. His castigators had calculated nicely the load of torture the human frame could bear. When Don Geronimo had fainted from the pain, Juan gathered from the evidence at hand, they had drenched his head with water to bring him back to life. His hair was still wet; he lay bound so tightly, hands clasping the horse's neck, feet drawn under its girth, that he could move nothing but his eyes, even if the strength for greater effort had endured for him to command.