Moreover, my own feeling was one of unutterable aversion from shedding blood, or sanctioning it to be shed. Whatever excuse the Carlists might have in their own minds for violence, I had none. I was not one of them, except by the accident of this association for Sarita's sake; and for me to raise my hand to take a man's life in such a case would be murder and nothing short of it.
Many thoughts of this kind beat themselves into my brain in the terrible minutes that followed the return of the two scouts, until I was tempted to go back to my companions and at all hazards order a retreat and find some other plan of getting to Calvarro's farm and to Sarita. Had Andreas been by my side at the moment, I should have done it, but without him we were powerless; and to leave him behind would have been an act of treachery and cowardice as well as folly.
Those minutes of suspense were wellnigh equal in intensity to a death agony.
CHAPTER XXV
AT CALVARRO'S
The tension of suspense was broken at length. I caught sight of the figures of the second couple of scouts on their return as they crossed a patch of moonlight at a little distance, and almost at the same moment a hand was laid on my shoulder, and the lad Andreas stood at my side. He came as silently as a shadow out of the darkness.
"We must fly, senor, there is danger," he whispered. "They will send out other scouts in this direction as soon as the last return. But I can trick them."
We hurried back to our companions, and Andreas, holding his horse's bridle, led the way. I told the other two to follow, and myself brought up the rear, glancing back now and again in great anxiety lest the soldiers should catch sight of us. But the lad knew his business, and a sharp turn up the hillside to the right brought us under the cover of a wood, and gave us an effective hiding-place.
We followed him in silence, and even the horses seemed to share a sense of the danger, so warily did they move. They were indeed, as Andreas had said, perfectly trained animals; and to that training we owed our safety that night.
When we had walked on this way some few hundred yards up the hill, our guide found a track into the wood, and along this we went, the darkness deepening with every step, until it was impenetrable. We were some hundred yards from the entrance, when Andreas stopped so suddenly that we ran one against the other in a confused muddle of men and horses.