Pedro turned away, and straining to produce a sob, fetched a hiccough, and led to the bridge. The lady, at first bewildered by his burst of gloomy eloquence, then touched by the profound melancholy with which it was delivered, melted from determination to tenderness. As he stepped upon the floor she rose, glanced about despairingly, and shouted:—
"Hold, Pedro, thou dear love of a man! I follow! Wait for me, thou poor thing—and the fiend take the bridge and its makers if it serve me not across!"
But at the terror of the swaying structure she faltered, and Pedro turned. "Nay, Señora!" he cried, in a voice of sad but gentle deprecation, and raising his hand, "'t is too much. I ask it not. Turn back."
For answer she sat down, and in her desperation heedless of exposure of limb, began sliding down the steep incline, clutching and moaning plaintively, the feminine now wholly uppermost. At last she neared Pedro's mule, and he called:—
"Stand up, my dear, and grasp his tail."
"Oh—God's mercy!—he will kick!" she replied, in a shuddering wail.
"Nay, stew me! a fly would not venture to kick out here," answered Pedro, with feeling. "Seize his tail!"
She did so, and with many a piteous whine and gasp, was at length across the abyss.
CHAPTER XXX
An Encounter on the Plain of Chita