"It is not at all probable they will ask this."
"No matter. Promise me, if they do, to keep my secret."
"Very good. I will be silent, since you wish it; although I do not understand the motive for such a recommendation."
The monk had not finished the sentence, ere the Indian disappeared.
The horsemen were rapidly approaching. The galloping of their steeds echoed on the ground like the rolling of thunder. Suddenly several shadows, scarcely distinguishable in the obscurity, rose as it were in the midst of the darkness, and a sharp voice shouted—
"Who goes there?"
"A friend!" the monk answered.
"Tell your name, ¡sangre de Dios!" the voice repeated, passionately, while the dry snap of a pistol being cocked, sounded disagreeably in the monk's ears. "At night there are friends in the desert!"
"I am a poor Franciscan monk, proceeding to the hatto del Rincón; and my name is Fray Arsenio Mendoza."
A hoarse cry replied to the monk's words—a cry whose meaning he had not the time to conjecture; that is to say, whether it was the result of pleasure or anger; for the horsemen came up with him like lightning, and surrounded him even before he could understand the reason of such a headlong speed to reach him.