“Be sure! Be sure!” was the response, a glint of sympathy lighting his eyes. “Have a care to you. I have that leetle fellow in bed. He is full of lemona squash and my pills. Soon his calentura is kill.”
“Well, don’t kill him too!”
“Ah, canaille!”
The members of General Herran’s party had already mounted and were slowly disappearing down the bend of the street, pack-mules and burros in the lead. The general himself, on a pinched-up, piebald horse that, like Hamlet’s cloud, bore a comical resemblance to a camel, lingered behind for his guest. David’s bay, lacking in zoological vagaries, pranced spiritedly to begone as soon as it felt its rider in the saddle.
“That is one good animal,” commented Miranda.
“The other needs your pills,” remarked Leighton solemnly.
With a laugh and a hearty “adios!” the two horsemen saluted the group in the doorway and galloped off after their companions. Una watched, motionless, long after David was out of sight. She had done her best to prevent his going, but all her efforts had been useless. Nor could she explain, even to herself, why it was that she so dreaded his leaving their party to travel alone with Herran. There was nothing logical in the feeling, of course, and she had to confess that for once she was influenced by an utterly unreasonable fear, a sort of superstition.
The journey from Honda to Bogota is a scramble over precipitous trails worn into the living rock by centuries of travel, through wastes of traffic-beaten mire, along glades of dew-soaked herbage that gleam refreshingly under cloudless skies in a wilderness of impenetrable forest. No other city of like size and importance has so rude and picturesque an approach, nor are there many that keep their commerce along ways and by methods so unmodern. The stranger, ignorant of the simplicities of South American life, whether in town or country, is bewildered by the oddities and hardships in a trip of this kind. But David had traveled more than once over the Bogota trail, and for him it had lost its novelty, especially as his sole aim on the present occasion was to reach his destination as quickly as possible. Herran had a similar feeling; hence, as the day was not unpleasantly warm, once they had passed beyond the lowlands of Honda both men urged their horses on to top speed. In a short time they had left the rest of the party far behind them, and broke into a race over the rough mountain trail. Tiring of this, they dropped back to a more sober gait, letting their horses choose their own way for a time.
“I telegraphed from Honda that we were coming,” said Herran in Spanish. “They are looking for us now in Bogota.”