Something hurt her hand, she opened her clenched palm; it was the horn handle of Driscoll’s knife. Had she really thought to defend herself with that inadequate thing? “Poof!” She tossed it from her, vexed at her own unconscious heroics. Then two dark arms reached out, nearer and nearer, and ten hooked fingers blurred her vision. But the arms shot upward, the fingers stiffened, and a body splashed across the doorway at her feet with the sound of a board dropped on water.

“Ai, poor man!”

She was on her knees, bending over him. But a second of the vermin lurched against her, and he too lay still. A pistol report from the cliff was simultaneous with each man’s fall. Both were dead. A third sank in the trail with a shattered hip, and another behind knew the agony of a broken leg. The marksman’s mercy was evidently tempered according to distance. For, having the matter now under control, he nonchalantly cracked only shin bones. Fra Diavolo from his shelter roared commands and curses, but not another imp would show himself. Crouched jealously, they chose rather to besiege their lone enemy on the cliff.

Now Driscoll’s point of view was less amusing. To change his position, he must expose himself to a fusilade from across the way. And if he tried to rush his friend of the gully, the brigands meantime would carry off the two girls. A gentleman’s part, therefore, was to stay where he was and be made a target of. But he varied it a little. At Don Tiburcio’s second shot, he lunged partly to his feet and fell forward as though mortally wounded. He lay quite still, and soon Don Tiburcio came creeping toward him. Don Tiburcio was thinking of his lost toll-moneys that should be on the corpse. Driscoll waited, his nerves alert, his pistols ready. But just beyond range, the blackmailer paused.

“Go for the women, you idiots,” he yelled. “The Gringo’s dead.”

The idiots verified the title straightway, for up they popped from behind their boulders and started for the shack.

“Los Cosacos!–El Tigre! Los Cosacos!” they yelled, scrambling out upon the road, bleeding, falling, praying, and kissing whatever greasy amulet or virgin’s picture they owned.

Then there beat into Driscoll’s ears the furious clatter of hoofs. It deafened him, the familiar, glorious din of it. The blood raged in his veins like fiery needle points. To see them–the cavalry, the cavalry! Then they were gone–a flashing streak of centaurs, a streamer of red in a blur of dust, maniac oaths, and pistol shots, and sweeping sabres. Hacked bodies were sucked beneath the swarm as saplings under an avalanche. Driscoll sprang up and gazed. Through eddying swirls he still could see red sleeved arms reach out, and lightning rays of steel, and half-naked fleeting creatures go down, and never a jot of the curse’s speed abate.

“Lordy, but Old Joe should ’a seen it!” he fairly shouted. He was thinking of Shelby, of the Old Brigade back in Missouri; daredevils, every one of them.

“Sacred name of thunder,” he cursed roundly, “a minute later and––”

“Si, mi coronel,” the faithful Tiburcio acknowledged gratefully, “Your Excellency came just in time.”

“There were two accomplices in this business,” the Tiger was saying, “one a trader, Murguía––”

“Killed him my very first shot,” lied Tiburcio. He would save his golden goose of the golden eggs.

“And the other, an American?”

“Got away with the others, señor.” Again Tiburcio’s reason was obvious. The American, if taken, might tell things.

“And”–Dupin gripped his cigar hungrily–“and Rodrigo?”

For answer the scout waved a hand vaguely up the trail.

“None went that way?” and the Colonel jerked his head toward the ravine.

“No, none. Your Mercy saw me driving them back.”

“Quick, then, on your horse! We’re losing time.”

Don Tiburcio was reluctant. He had not yet recovered his money from the American. “But the women, mi coronel? They are there, in that shack. Hadn’t I better stay––?”

“Jacqueline, you mean? Of course the little minx is in trouble, the second she touches land. But you come with me. She shall have another protector.”

Tiburcio knew the Cossack chief. He obeyed, and both men galloped away after the chase.

“Michel!” cried Jacqueline, stepping over the forms of men before the hut, and forgetting them. The natty youth was torn, rumpled, grimy. The sky-blue of his uniform was gray with dust. But to see him at all proved that he had escaped Fra Diavolo’s web in Tampico. And the relief! It made her almost gay. “Ah, Michel–le beau sabreur!–and did you enjoy it, mon ami?”

He alighted at her feet, and raised her hand to his lips.

“Monsieur,” she demanded quick as thought, “my trunk?”

“Mon Dieu, mademoiselle, I did well to bring myself.”

“You should have brought my trunk, sir, first of all. Deign to look at this frock! No, no, don’t, please don’t. But tell me everything. What could have happened to you last night? Why did you not meet me this morning?”

“Yet,” demanded Jacqueline, “how could you know all this, there in your prison room?”

“Am I saying I did, name of a name? Well, those poor sailors wandered about all night in the swamps across the river, and this morning they ran into Colonel Dupin and his Contras, and the colonel was frothing mad. He had only just stumbled on the bodies of Captain Maurel and some of his men, who had been ambushed and murdered. Poor Maurel was dangling from a tree among the vultures. Others were mutilated. Some had even been tortured. And all were stripped, and rotting naked. Mon Dieu, mon dieu, but it’s an inferno, this country!”

“Yes, yes, but how did they find you?”

“Colonel Dupin simply brought the sailors back to Tampico and searched that café, and got me out. The proprietor wasn’t thought to be any too good an Imperialist, anyway. They shot him, and then we came right along here.”

“Very nice of you, I am sure.”

“Not at all. Dupin isn’t thinking of anybody but your Fra Diavolo, who must have killed Captain Maurel.–Was he here?”

“Who? Don Rodrigo?”

“Don Rodrigo?”

“Of course. He’s the same as Fra Diavolo.”

“You mean that bandit,” cried Ney, “that terrible Rodrigue? But he is dead, don’t you remember, Fra Diavolo said so?”

“Stupid! Fra Diavolo is Don Rodrigo himself.”

“Not dead then? And I’ll meet him yet! But,” and his sudden hope as suddenly collapsed, “Dupin will get him first.”

“I think not, because Rodrigo did not take the trail.”

“Then which way did he go? Quick, please, mademoiselle, which way?”

“Oh, what chance, what luck!” But the boy stopped with his foot in the stirrup. “No, mademoiselle, I can’t leave you!”

“Oh yes you can. I daresay there’s another champion about.” She glanced up at the cliff. “And besides, all danger is past. The donkey caravan is still here, and for company, I have Berthe, of course.”

“Really, mademoiselle?”

“Yes, Michel, really.”

“Good, I’m off! But we will meet you at–Dupin just told me–at the next village on this same trail. Now I’m off!” He was indeed. “I say, mademoiselle,” he called back, “I’m glad we left the ship, aren’t you?”

Jacqueline turned hastily her gaze from the cliff. He startled her, expressing her own secret thought.

Chasseur and steed vanished in the ravine, and she smiled. “The God of pleasant fools go with him,” she murmured.

Like another Black Douglas, Din Driscoll rose among the crags, the dark tufts curling stubbornly on his bared head. He looked a sinewy, toughened Ajax. But he only spoiled it. For, raising his arms, he stretched himself, stretched long and luxuriously. His very animal revelling in the huge elongation of cramped limbs was exasperating. Next he clapped the slouch on his head, and clambered down.

Jacqueline might have been surprised to see him. Her brows lifted. “Not killed?” she exclaimed. “But no, of course not. You gave yourself air, you ran away.”

Driscoll made no answer. He was thinking of what to do next. She knew that he had run because of her, and she was piqued because he would not admit it. “So,” she went on tauntingly, “monsieur counts his enemy by numbers then?”

“Didn’t count them at all,” he murmured absently.

“But,” and she tapped her foot, “a Frenchman, he would have done it–not that way.”

She was talking in English, and the quaintness of it began to create in him a desire for more. “Done what, miss?” he asked.

“He would not have run–a Frenchman.”

“Prob’bly not, ’less he was pretty quick about it.”

“I wager one thing,” she fretted, “and it is that when you bring men down to earth you have not even at all–how do you say?–the martial rage in your eyes?”

“W’y, uh, not’s I know of. It might spoil good shooting.”

“And your pipe”–her lip curled and smiled at the same time–“the pipe does not, neither?”

His mouth twitched at the corners. “N-o,” he decided soberly, “not in close range.”

She gave him up, he had no pose. Still, she was out of patience with him. “Hélas! monsieur, all may see you are Ameri-can. But there, you have not to feel sorry. I forgive you, yes, because–it wasn’t dull.”

“Hadn’t we better be––”

“Now what,” she persisted, “kept you so long up there, for example?”

Driscoll reddened. He had lingered behind the screen of rock to bandage his furrowed leg. “S’pose you don’t ask,” he said abruptly, “there’s plenty other things to be doing.”

He turned and invited the little Breton maid to come from the shack. She was white, and trembled a little yet. “I knew, I knew you would not leave us, monsieur,” she was trying to tell him. “But if you had–oh, what would madame––”

“Now then,” the practical American interrupted, “where’s Murgie?”

Driscoll lifted the shrunken bundle of a man, held him at arm’s length, looked him over, and stood him on his feet. The withered face was more than ever like a death’s head, and the eyes were glassy, senseless. But as to hurt or scratch, there was none. The beady orbs started slowly in their sockets, rolling from side to side. The lips opened, and formed words. “Killed? yes, I am killed. But I want–my cotton, my burros, my peons–I want them. I am dead, give them to me.”

“You’re alive, you old maverick.”

The gaze focused slowly on Driscoll, and slowly wakened to a crafty leer. Believe this Gringo?–not he!

With an arm behind his shoulders Driscoll forced him down the trail to his caravan. Most of the animals were lying down, dozing under their packs. Murguía’s eyes grew watery when he saw them, but he was still dazed and his delusion was obstinate. The leer shot exultant gleams. “A rich man can enter heaven,” he chuckled with unholy glee.

“Oh wake up, and give me two donkeys for the girls. Their horses got hit, you know.”

Then the stunned old miser began to perceive that he was not in heaven. His tyrant’s voice! “You get my horses killed,” he whined, “and now you take my burros.”

Driscoll said no more, but picked out two beasts and bound some cushioned sacking on their backs for saddles. Then with a brisk hearty word, he swept Berthe up on the first one.

“Next,” he said, turning to Jacqueline.

“What’s the matter, now?” he asked. “Quick, please, I’m in a hurry.”

“It’s too preposterous. I’ll not!”

“You will,” he said quietly.

Her gray eyes deepened to blue with amazement. She stood stock still, haughtily daring him. She even lifted her arms a little, leaving the girlish waist defenseless. Her slender figure was temptation, the pretty ducal fury was only added zest. Up among the rocks Driscoll had found himself whispering, “She’s game, that little girl!” But at the same time he had remembered Rodrigo’s innuendo, the linking of her name with Maximilian’s. She was so brave, and so headstrong, so lovably headstrong, and her beauty was so fresh and soft! Yet he could not but think of that taint in what nature had made so pure. Of a sudden there was a something wrong, something ugly and hideously wrong in life. And the country boy, the trooper, the man of blood-letting, what you will, was filled with helpless rage against it; and next against himself, because the girlish waist could thrill him so. “A silly little butterfly,” he argued inwardly. Before, he had been unaware of his own indifference. But now he angrily tried to summon it back. He set his mind on their situation, on what it exacted. It exacted haste, simple, impersonal haste. And keeping his mind on just that, he caught her up.

“Oh, you boor!” she cried, pushing at him.

His jaw hardened. His will was well nigh superhuman, for he battled against two furious little hands, against the dimple and the patch so near his lips, against the fragrance of her hair, against the subtle warmth of his burden.

“No, no!” she panted. “Monsieur, do you hear me? I am not to be carried!”

“Maybe not,” said he, carrying her.

“Bonté divine!” she gasped. But she took care not to fall off.

He drew a long breath.

“Now whip ’em up,” he commanded.

The first village beyond, where Dupin had promised to meet Jacqueline, was a squatting group of thatched cones in a dense forest of Cyprus and eucalyptus. Its denizens were Huasteca Indians, living as they had before the Conquest, among themselves still talking their native dialect. The name of the hamlet was Culebra.

The coy twilight waned quickly, and the caravan was still pushing on through the thick darkness of the wood, when a high tensioned yelping made the vast silence insignificant, ugly. But as the travelers filed into the clearing where the village was, the curs slunk away with coyote humility, their yellow points of eyes glowing back on the intruders.

With a forager’s direct method, Driscoll roused the early slumbering village. He would not take alfafa, he declined rastrojo. It was human food, corn, that he bought for his horse. He housed his dumb friend under a human roof too. After which he prepared a habitation for the women. He swept the likeliest hut clean of ashes, brazier, and bits of pots and jars. He carpeted the earth floor in Spanish moss, as King Arthur’s knights once strewed their halls with rushes. It was luxury for a coroneted lass, if one went back a dozen centuries. There were chinks between the sooty saplings that formed the wall, but over these he hung matting, and he drove a stake for a candle.

And the Marquise d’Aumerle? Learning to eat roasting ears, which somehow just would leave a grain on her cheek with every bite, the dainty Marquise thought how much finer was this than the tedious bumping ship. How much more tempting than the ultra-belabored viands on white china that had to be latticed down! Here was angel’s bread in the wilderness. And the appetite that drove her to ask for more, that was the only sauce–an appetite that was a frisson. A new sensation, in itself!

“Éh, but it’s deep, madame,” said one.

“It’s the politeness of the heart,” the other explained.

Outside Driscoll spread his blanket across the doorway where his horse was sheltered, and wrapped in his great cape-coat, he stretched himself for a smoke. But Murguía came with cigars, of the Huasteca, gray and musty. Driscoll accepted one, waving aside the old man’s apologies. He puffed and waited. Conviviality in Don Anastasio meant something.

“Ah, amigo,” the thin voice cracked in a spasm of forced heartiness, “ah, it was a banquet! Si, si, a banquet! Only, if there were but a liqueur, a liqueur to give the after-cigar that last added relish, verdad, señor?”

Driscoll tapped his “after-cigar” till the ashes fell. “Well? he asked.

“Ai de mi, caballero, but I am heavy with regrets. I can offer nothing. My poor cognac–no, not after such a feast. But whiskey–ah, whiskey is magnifico. It is American.”

He stopped, with a genial rubbing of his bony hands. But his sad good-fellowship was transparent enough, and in the darkness his eyes were beads of malice. Driscoll half grunted. A long way round for a drink, he thought. “Here,” he said, getting out his flask, “have a pull at this.”

Murguía took it greedily. He had seen the flask before. The covering of leather was battered and peeled. “Perhaps a little–water?” he faltered. Driscoll nodded, and off the old Mexican ambled with the flask. When he returned, he had a glass, into which he had poured some of the liquor. The canteen he handed back to the trooper, who without a word replaced it in his pocket. Murguía lingered. He sipped his toddy absently.

“I, I wonder why the friends of the señoritas do not come?” he ventured.

The old man shrugged his shoulders. “And why not? You may not believe me, señor, but should I not feel easier if they were–well, out of the reach of Don Rodrigo?”

“Out of––Look here, where’s the danger now?”

“Ai, señor, don’t be too sure. Colonel Dupin still does not come, and it might be–because the guerrillas have stopped him.”

“Man alive, he had ’em running!”

“H’m, yes, but there’s plenty more. This very village breeds them, feeds them, welcomes them home. Don Rodrigo can gather ten times what he had to-day. And if he does, and if, if he is looking for the señoritas again––”

Driscoll shifted on his blanket. “I see,” he drawled. “F’r instance, if the señoritas vanish before he gets here, he won’t blame you? Oh no, you were asleep, you couldn’t know that I had up and carried ’em off. Anyhow, you’d rather risk Rodrigo than Colonel Dupin––Yes, I see.” He tucked his saddle under his head, and lay flat, blinking at the stars. “This trail go on to Valles?” he inquired drowsily.

Murguía’s small eyes brightened over him. “Yes,” he said, eagerly.

“Correct,” yawned the American, “I’ve already made sure.”

“And if––” But a snore floated up from the blanket.

When Murguía was gone, the sleeper awoke. He carefully poured out all the remaining whiskey. “It may be what they call ‘fine Italian,’” he muttered, with a disgusted shake of the head, but he neglected to throw the flask away as well. Next he saddled Demijohn and two of the pack horses, then lay down and slept in earnest, as an old campaigner snatches at rest.

“So,” said Jacqueline, appearing under the stars, “monsieur does not wish to be relieved of us? He will not wait for his friends?”

“Get on these horses! Here, I’ll help you.”

Soon they three were riding through the forest, in the trail toward Valles. Behind them the fairy popping swelled louder, yet louder, and the man glanced resentfully at his two companions. He was missing the game.

Back in the village of Culebra a demon uproar hounded Don Anastasio out of serape and slumber. All about him were fleeing feet. They were shadows, bounding like frightened deer from the wood, across the clearing, and into the wood again. Some turned and fired as they ran. Screaming women and children hurried out of the jacales, and darted here and there. Dogs howled everywhere. A storm of crashing brush and a wild troop of horsemen, each among them a free lance of butchery, burst on the village. A second crashing storm, and they were in the forest again. They left quivering blots in their wake, and a moaning gave a lower and dreadfuller note to the wailing of women. Only the leader of the pursuers, with a few others, drew rein.

“Death of an ox!” the French oath rang out, “We’re in their very nest. Quick, you loafers, the torch, the torch!”

Flames began to crackle, and in the glare Murguía was seen frantically driving burros and peons to safety. The leader of the troop leaned over in his saddle and had him by the collar.

“Who the name of a name are you?”

Don Anastasio looked up. His captor was a great bearded man. “Colonel Dupin!” he groaned.

“Who are you?–But I should know. It’s the trader, the accomplice of Rodrigo. Sacré nom, tell me, where is she? We can’t find her here. Where is she?”

“With Rodrigo–ha! But he’ll have no ransom–no, not if it breaks Maximilian’s heart.–Now, Señor Trader––”

He stopped and called to him his nearest men. Murguía sank limp.

“But he hasn’t got her! Rodrigo hasn’t got her!”

“Who has then?”

“The other one, the American.”

“Which way did they go?”

“If Your Mercy will not––”

“Shoot him!” thundered the Tiger.

“But if he will tell us?” someone interposed.

It was Don Tiburcio, still the guardian angel of the golden goose.

“Bien,” growled the Tiger, “let him live then until we find the American.”

“Which way did they go?” Tiburcio whispered in Murguía’s ear.

“To, to Valles,” came the reply.

The blazing huts revealed a ghoulish joy on the miser’s face. The Gringo, not he, would now have to explain to the Tiger.

That garish daub which was sopped up from the burning homes of men and bespattered over the forest’s dark crest was already mellowing under the gentler touch of dawn, when the three travelers gained the open country.

“Poor, dirty, little Inditos,” Jacqueline mused aloud. Berthe struck her pony in a tremor of fright. The American was riding ahead. “Fire and sword,” Jacqueline went on, and her voice lowered to intense scorn, “they make the final tableau, but–it’s gaudy, it’s cheap.”

The trail had broadened into a high road, and now it wound among the hills like a soiled white ribbon. Driscoll turned in his saddle. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he observed in the full-toned drawl that was peculiar to him, “but what we’d better be projecting a change of venue. This route is too public, and publicity around here strikes me as sort of prejudiced. S’pose we just stir up an alibi?”

A certain stately old judge back in Missouri would have smiled thus to hear the scion of his house. But the marchioness, confident in her mastery of English, thought it was the veriest jargon. What was the boy trying to say? His next words grew fairly intelligible. “We are now headed for Valles. Well, we’ve decided not to go to Valles.”

A narrow pony path crossed the road. “First trail to the left, after leaving the wood,” Driscoll said aloud, “and this must be it.” Campaigner in an unfamiliar country, he had informed himself, and it was with confidence that he led his little party into the bridlepath. But he looked anxiously at the forest behind. He did not doubt but that Rodrigo, if it were he back there, would terrify Murguía into betraying their destination, or their supposed destination, which was Valles.

“Can’t you hurry ’em up a bit?” he called back.

“We do try,” protested Jacqueline, holding aloft a broken switch, “but they only smile at us.”

Driscoll got down and undid the spurs from his boots. One of the immense saw-like discs he adjusted to mademoiselle’s high heel, passing the strap twice around the silk-clad ankle. Jacqueline gazed down on the short-cropped, curly head, and she saw that the back of his neck was suddenly red. But the discovery awakened nothing of the coquette in her. Quite the contrary, there was something grateful, even gravely maternal, in the smile hovering on her lips for the rough trooper who took fright like a girl over a revealed instep. Still, the interest was not altogether maternal as she watched him doing the same service for Berthe. Perhaps he was too far away, or perhaps practice brought indifference, but at any rate, his neck was no longer tinged in that fiery way.

“Now dig ’em!” said he. “We want to make that clump of mesquite yonder, now pretty quick.”

“Monsieur,” Jacqueline questioned demurely, and in her most treacherous way, “how much longer do we yet follow you up and down mountains?”

“W’y, uh–I’m going to the City of Mexico.”

“And we others, we may tag along, n’est-ce pas? But the city is far, far. And, to-night?”

“Of course,” said Driscoll, “if you should happen to know of a good hotel––” He paused and gazed inquiringly over hills covered with banana and coffee to the frost line. He would not have tried a frailer temper so, but to provoke hers was incense to his own.

“You others, the Americans,” she said tentatively, as though explaining him to herself, “you are so greedy of this New World! You won’t give us of it, no, not even a poor little answer of information. Alas, Monseigneur the American, I apologize for being on this side the ocean at all–in a tattered frock.”

Driscoll looked, but he could see nothing wrong. She seemed as crisp and dainty as ever. If there were any disarray, it was a fetching sort, with a certain rakish effect.

“Oh that’s all right,” he assured her heartily, “you can stay.”

“Really, and after you’ve been writing us notes from Washington to–to ‘get out’? We French people do not think that was polite.”

“I never wrote you any notes, and,” he added in a lowered tone, “the devil take Washington, since Lee didn’t!”

He did not reply, but his expression disturbed her unaccountably. She could almost note the whimsical daredeviltry fade from his face, as there came instead the grimmest and strangest locking of the jaws. She tried to imagine the French beaten and her feelings then, but it was difficult, for her countrymen were “the bravest of the world, the unconquered.” They had borne victory over four continents, into two hemispheres. But this American, what must he feel? He was thinking, in truth, of many things. Of his leave taking with his regiment, with those lusty young savages of Missourians whom perhaps he was never to see again. He was thinking of his ride through the South to Mobile, of the misery in stubborn heroism, of the suffering everywhere, matching that in the dreary fever camp of the Old Brigade. He was thinking of all the beautiful Southland torn and ravaged and of the lowering cloud of finality. Of the Army of Northern Virginia so hard pressed; of the doom of Surrender, a knell already sounded, perhaps. Never had Jacqueline seen such bitterness on a human face. It was a man’s bitterness. And almost a desperado’s. At least there was the making of a desperado in the youth of a moment before. She caught herself shuddering. There was something so like a lurking death astride the yellow horse in front of her.

Abrupt frankness, with its guileful calculation to surprise one into betrayal, was the subtlest diplomacy. “Let us see,” she mused aloud, “you, your comrades, monsieur, you have no country now? Bien, that accounts for your interest in Maximilian?”

“And what is your interest, Miss–Jack-leen?”

She staggered before the riposte. The “Jack-leen” was innocent blundering, she knew that. He had heard Rodrigo address her so, and he used it in all respect. But there was her own question turned on herself. By “her interest” he of course meant the interest she was showing in himself; he was not referring it to Maximilian. And yet the double meaning was there, just the same. He had struck back, that was certain, but because she could not tell where, nor even whether he had wounded, she was afraid to parry, much more to venture another thrust. Those who had sent the rustic evidently knew what they were about. He could shoot well, which was exhilarating. To redeem one’s country’s discredited bills, was quixotic. She rose to that, because she was French. But to fence with herself–well, that was quality. Instinctive, inbred, unconscious, and unregistered in any studbook of Burke or Gotha–but quality. And she recognized it, for there was deference in the silence which her baffled diplomacy now counseled.

They passed many natives plodding on to Valles with market stuff, going at the Inditos’ tireless foxtrot, now a man in loincloth stooped under a great bundle of straw or charcoal, or a family entire, including burro and dog. Of a gray-bearded patriarch with a chicken coop strapped to his back, Driscoll inquired the distance to an hacienda of the region which had the name of Moctezuma. “Probablemente, it will be ten leagues farther on, señor,” the Huastecan replied.

They acquired a pineapple by purchase, and stopped for their morning coffee at a hut among numberless orange trees, and at another farther on for their midday lunch, where they learned that the Hacienda de Moctezuma was only just beyond the first hill, and only just beyond the first hill they learned that they had six leagues more to go. They covered three of these leagues, and were rewarded with the information that it was fully seven leagues yet. Geography in Mexico was clearly an elastic quantity. But towards three o’clock a young fellow on a towering stack of fagots waved his arm over the landscape, and said, “Why, señor, you are there now.” Yes, it was the hacienda, but how far was it to the hacienda house? Oh, that was still a few little leagues.

In the end, after nightfall, they rode into a very wide valley, where two broad, shallow rivers joined and flowed on as one through the lowland. Here, on the brow of a slope, they perceived the walls and the church tower of what seemed to be a small town. But after one last inquiry, they learned that it was the seat of Anastasio Murguía’s baronial domain.