"Attack him promptly? No, Harold, that would be doing too much. I have no orders to interfere with him, and besides I should hardly be able to obtain evidence that he or his men had actually made a raid on Mr. Blunt. No, our best plan, if our suspicions are confirmed, will be to slink away, and, once we are back home, help our employer to make other plans. Then we will set a net for the fellow, and one of these days perhaps he will fall into it. In any case we shall be warned of the danger, and after that it will be our own fault if this man is successful. Ah, there is Pepito! I can see his men distinctly. We will move on again."
Away to his right, dimly illuminated by the feeble rays of the moon, a ghostly band of riders could be seen jogging slowly on towards the forest, and a glance told Dudley that the men he saw must be part of the escort which he had brought from the estancia. He shook his reins, pressed his knees into the flanks of his horse, and set the beast in motion. Then his eyes left the silent band riding under the moonlight, and fixed themselves on the forest line ahead. And presently, as the distance decreased, he was able to make out the tops of the trees, which were moving in the breeze, and later even caught the whisper of the leaves, and the distant creak of swaying branches. Down below the summits of the trees the same dark line continued, save for a small break here and there, where the faint light from the sky filtered in between the trees.
Nothing else could be seen, and though he searched every foot of that dark line with his eyes, he discovered nothing to cause him alarm, or to warn him of the dark figures hovering in the forest. For some few feet within the shadow cast by the trees a silent band sat their horses, waiting the word of the squat individual who rode at their head.
"The fools! To think that they should play so nicely into my hands!" this leader whispered to the man at his elbow. "Here were we, sure that the knaves suspected us, about to ride out with the hope of surprising their camp. Gauchos are the same all over the pampas, and who knows, it is more than likely that their guards would have discovered us, and to take them all would have meant a long and fast gallop across the plains, a thing that neither you nor I like, amico."
A grunt from his companion told this leader that the man heard and assented.
"Even a gaucho may be thrown and killed when galloping at night," he answered sourly. "There was Guino, an old comrade, who broke his neck when——"
"Yes, yes, I remember," was the hasty interruption. "But to return to these fools. They have saved us all that trouble. Instead of our riding out and attempting to surprise their camp they come to us. You hear me? They ride to the forest, thereby placing their necks in the noose we have prepared, and showing me plainly that if I was suspicious of them, they also had little faith in me. Good! They shall be captured. You have placed the men?"
"They are in position, señor. They await your whistle."
"And you gave them strict orders to do as I said?"
"They understand what is wanted of them thoroughly. These men are to be captured. Our fellows would sooner kill them at once and have done with them. But you have reasons for saving their lives, and our fellows are not fools."