"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, dropping back into her seat and forcing a laugh.
"El Diablo Cojuelo, the outlaw, is merely a creature of your own
imagination?"
"I am El Diablo Cojuelo," repeated Don Carlos. "I am a dual
personality. At my castle and at Court I am Don Carlos de Ruiz,
Governor of a Province and an administrator of the laws. Here in my
mountain eyrie I am Cojuelo, the outlaw, acknowledging no laws save
those I make myself."
"I still do not understand," remarked Myra, with perplexity in her blue
eyes. "Do you mean to say you lead a double life and occasionally
masquerade as a brigand, without anyone knowing that Don Carlos and
Cojuelo are one and the same? Is there no one aware of your identity?"
"Many of my people are aware of my identity, but none would betray me,
even if put to the torture," replied Don Carlos. "Those who are in the
secret vastly enjoy the way in which I hoodwink the authorities. They
enjoy the joke of my offer of a reward for the capture of El Diablo
Cojuelo, dead or alive, and my periodical 'searches' for the outlaw."
"But what is the idea of it all?" inquired Myra. "It seems foolishness
to me, but perhaps it flatters your vanity to be able to go about
scaring women and kidnapping girls."
There was scorn instead of bewilderment in her voice and eyes now, and
Don Carlos's pale face flushed slightly.
"Before the coming of El Diablo Cojuelo there were men in this province
who had enriched themselves at the cost of the peasants, cheated
farmers out of their land, and made them little better than serfs," he
explained quietly and deliberately. "The law could not touch these
vampires, parasites, money-lenders and profiteers. Cojuelo came upon
the scene, bled these rogues as they had bled the peasants, plundered
their houses, spirited them away, and held them to ransom."
"Really! Quite a profitable hobby, I suppose!" Myra remarked.
"Quite--and useful, to boot," responded Don Carlos, his face now
expressionless. "With the money which I have wrung from the spoilers I
have been able to restore their lands to many of the people without
much cost to myself, to pay their debts and aid them to escape from the
thraldom of blood-sucking money-lenders and tyrannical masters. I have
also made it possible for men to marry the girls of their choice, in
cases where the parents objected. A threat from El Diablo Cojuelo to
carry off a girl if she is not allowed to marry the man she loves, is
usually enough to bring her parents to their senses."