"Demonios! I have as great an interest in it as yourself, señor padre," the gambusino replied with superb coolness. "You know that an uninterrupted succession of unfortunate speculations robbed me of my fortune, and I hoped thus to regain it at a stroke."
At these words Fray Ambrosio had incredible difficulty in repressing a smile; for it was a matter of public notoriety that señor Don Andrés Garote was a lepero, who, as regarded fortune, had never possessed a farthing of patrimony; that throughout his life he had never been aught but an adventurer; and that the unlucky speculations of which he complained were simply an ill luck at monte, which had recently stripped him of 20,000 piastres, acquired Heaven alone knew how. But señor Don Andrés Garote was a man of unequalled bravery, gifted with a fertile and ready mind, whom the accidents of life had compelled to live for a lengthened period on the llanos (prairies), whose paths he knew as thoroughly as he did the tricks of those who dwelt on them. Hence, and for many other reasons, Andrés Garote was an invaluable comrade for Fray Ambrosio, who had also a bitter revenge to take on the monte table, because he pretended to place the most sincere faith in what it pleased his honourable mate to say touching his lost fortune.
"However," he said, after an instant's reflection, "supposing that the placer is intact, and that no one has discovered it, we shall have a long journey to reach it."
"Yes," the gambusino remarked, significantly; "the road is difficult and broadcast with perils innumerable."
"We must march with our chins on our shoulders, and finger on the rifle trigger—"
"Fight nearly constantly with wild beasts or Indians—"
"In a word, do you not believe that the woman Red Cedar has carried off will prove a horrid bore?"
"Dreadfully so," Andrés made answer, with an intelligent glance.
"What is to be done?"
"Hang it! That is difficult to say."