“It was an impulse.” She moved her hands puzzledly. “I don’t know. I suppose you have the air of a man who is used to being asked impossible things. You look as if you would do them.”
“I do,” said the Saint modestly.
It was his own answer, too. She was a damsel in distress — and no damsel in distress had ever called on the Saint in vain. And she was beautiful, also, which was a very desirable asset to damsels in distress. And about her there was a mystery, which to Simon Templar was the trumpet call of adventure.
In the late afternoon, at one of the bends in the trail where it dipped to the level of the river, the Saint reined in his horse and dismounted at the water’s edge.
“Are we there?” she said.
“No. But we’re leaving the river.”
He scooped water up in his hands and drank, and splashed it over his face. It was numbingly cold, but it steamed off his arms in the hot dry air. She knelt down and drank beside him, and then sat back on her heels and looked up at the hills that hemmed them in.
A kind of shy happiness lighted her eyes, almost uncertainly, as if it had not been there for a long time and felt itself a stranger.
“I understand now,” she said. “I understand why Gaspar loved all this, in spite of what he was. If only he could have been content with it...”
“You were not happy?” said the Saint gently.