“He will go either to Tacarigua or to Rio Chico, in that case,” Felipe declared. He began to look dubious. Laying an index finger in the palm of a hand, he did some calculating. It would take not less than so many days, perhaps. At four reales each day—he counted on his fingers. “Out so much for just a woman!” he concluded. “I will not do it.”
But Manuelita did not hear. She was on her feet and getting ready to leave. The baby, awake and hungry, seemed to know her purpose. He began a lusty howling.
“Take, mamma.” She pushed him toward her mother.
The old woman caught the squalling child between her knees, hastily lit a tabaco, put it between her toothless gums to make it burn, and gave it to him. He grew still at once, seized the long cigar in both little hands, and fell to smoking industriously.
“Foolish! foolish!” she scolded. “And you will have your trouble for naught. Can you hold a man who does not want you? No woman can do that. You had better stay.”
Manuelita ignored the advice. She was putting the last touches to her preparations. In a bright cotton handkerchief she tied a comb, several baked plantains, some round thick arepas made of mashed corn, and her cigarettes; she swung her straw hat over one arm and dropped the lanza into a sheath of inlaid leather at her belt. Then, without a glance at mother, child, or neighbour, she went rapidly up the street and entered the cacao under low-hanging branches.
But soon she paused to consider a moment. What if she were travelling the wrong way! Suppose they had gone in an easterly direction, toward Rio Chico. Yet, no, for Juan was there. Besides, since the hacienda of San Jacinto, a portion of the northern half of the plain of Barlovento, curves in to meet the Rio Tuy, the couple would have had to cross the swollen stream at the very start. They would go north, to Tacarigua. She was sure of that. And, taking off her alpargatas, she walked in a great semicircle, looking for fresh footprints.
Across ditch after ditch she went, through black water and blacker ooze. Sometimes her steps were sure, more often she sank to the knees, or fell, her hands flattening against a ditch side.
She found fresh footprints in countless numbers, and leading toward every point of the compass. Some had been made by naked feet, some by alpargatas. Some were long and wide, some were short and more narrow. She was bewildered by them.
“Ah! Madre de Dios!” she faltered.