“The last time I heard of my husband, he was at the Fonda de la Quinta,” she said. “That was two years ago. He wrote to me that he was going into the mountains. He liked to do things like that, to climb mountains and sleep under the stars and be a man alone, sometimes — it is curious, for he was very much a city man... I never heard of him again. He said he was going to climb the Gran Seño. I remembered, when I heard the name, that I had read of El Rojo in the newspapers about that time. And it seemed to me, when I heard you speak of El Rojo, that perhaps El Rojo was the answer.”
“If it was El Rojo,” said the Saint quietly, “I don’t think it would help you to find him now.”
Her eyes were still an enigma.
“Even so,” she said, “it would be something to know.”
“But you’ve waited two years—”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I have waited two years.”
She had told him no more than that, and he had known that she did not wish to say any more, but it had been enough to send him off on that quixotic wild-goose chase.
He had been leading the way for two hours, but presently, where the trail broadened for a short distance, she brought her horse up beside his, and they rode knee to knee. “I wonder why you should do this for me,” she said.
He shrugged.
“Why did you ask me?”