“Quite near!” she cried.
“Or from Sayula,” he added. “Any of the ordinary men in big hats you see around the plaza, may possibly be bandits, when banditry pays, as a profession, and isn’t punished with any particular severity.”
“It is hard to believe!” she said.
“It is so obvious!” he said, dropping into one of the rocking-chairs opposite her, and smiling across the onyx table.
“I suppose it is!” she said.
He clapped his hands, and his mozo Martin came up. Ramón ordered something, in a low, subdued tone. The man replied in an even lower, more subdued tone. Then the master and man nodded at one another, and the man departed, his huaraches swishing a little on the terrace.
Ramón had fallen into the low, crushed sort of voice so common in the country, as if everyone were afraid to speak aloud, so they murmured guardedly. This was unusual, and Kate noticed it in him with displeasure. She sat looking past the thick mango-trees, whose fruit was changing colour like something gradually growing hot, to the ruffled, pale-brown lake. The mountains of the opposite shore were very dark. Above them lay a heavy, but distant black cloud, out of which lightning flapped suddenly and uneasily.
“Where is Don Cipriano?” she asked.
“Don Cipriano is very much General Viedma at the moment,” he replied. “Chasing rebels in the State of Colima.”
“Will they be very hard to chase?”