"Pardon, my friend; you owe them two months."
"How is that?"
"Because I have renewed their engagement for two months this very morning at the same price; for that matter it is not dear; the fellows have a certain value."
"What a strange idea to hamper us afresh with these wretches! Would it not have been better to have got rid of them, and to send them to get hanged somewhere else?"
"As to being hanged, make your mind easy; that will happen to them sooner or later. Meanwhile, I have thought it preferable to keep them in our service. Do you remember, my friend, that when we fight against bandits we should have some of the same stamp in our interests?"
"Arrange it as you like, that's your affair; for you do everything here according to your own notions. I Keep them or don't keep them—I wash my hands of it."
"You are merry, my friend?"
"No, I am sad; I have sometimes a temptation to put an end to it by blowing out the brains of that cursed Pincheyra, and then taking the same leap myself."
"Be careful not to give way to these temptations, my friend; not that I interest myself the least in the world in these Pincheyras, for I am reserving for Don Pablo and his brothers a dish of my own preparing, which they will find too highly spiced, I am convinced; but the moment has not yet come. Let us be patient, and, for a commencement, be present at the interview today, my friend; and open your ears, for if I do not much deceive myself, you will hear strange things."
"Yes, yes, I suppose that an interview with the colonel—for he has definitively taken this grade on his own authority—must be fertile in curious incidents."