For a little while the girl was wrapped in an unapproachable solitude of thought. Then she turned to the Saint again.
“Señor,” she said, “do you think you could help me find El Rojo?”
Even south of the border, he was still a Saint errant, or perhaps a sucker for adventure. He said, “I could try.”
They rode out on the dazzling stone track that winds beside the river — a track which was nothing more than the marks that centuries of solitary feet had left on the riot of tumbled boulders from which the hills rose up.
The Saint lounged in the saddle, relaxed like a vaquero, letting his mount pick its own way over the broken rock. His mind went back to the café where they had sat together over coffee, after lunch, and he had said to her, “Either you must be a journalist looking for an unusual interview, or you want to be kidnapped by El Rojo for publicity, or you’ve been reading too many romantic stories and you think you could fall in love with him.”
She had only smiled in her quiet way, inscrutable in spite of its friendliness, and said, “No, señor — you are wrong in all your guesses. I am looking for my husband.”
The Saint’s brows slanted quizzically.
“You mean you are Señora Rojo?”
“Oh, no. I am Señora Alvarez de Quevedo. Teresa Alvarez.”
Then she looked at him, quickly and clearly, as if she had made up her mind about something.