"No," answered Sor Teresa. "Why do you ask?"
"There has been a man on horseback on the road behind us," he answered with assumed carelessness, "all the way from Pampeluna. He has now taken a short cut and is in front on the road above us; I can hear him; that is all."
And he gave a little cry to his horses; the signal for them to trot. They were approaching the mouth of the Valley of the Wolf, and could hear the sound of its wild waters in the darkness below them. The valley opens out like a fan with either slope rising at an easy angle to the pine woods. The road is a cornice cut on the western bank upon which side it runs for ten miles until the bridge below the village of Torre Garda leads it across the river to the sunny slope where the village crouches below the ancient castle from which the name is taken.
The horses were going at a walking pace now, and the driver to show, perhaps, his nonchalance and fearlessness was humming a song beneath his breath, when suddenly the hillside burst into flame and a deafening roar of musketry stunned both horses and driver. Juanita happened to be looking up at the hillside and she saw the fire run along like a snake of flame in the grass. In a moment the carriage had swung round and the horses were going at a gallop down the hill again. The driver stood up. He had a rein in either hand and he hauled the horses round each successive corner with consummate skill. All the while he used language which would have huddled Cousin Peligros shrieking in the bottom of the carriage.
Juanita and Sor Teresa stood up and looked back. By the light of the firing they saw a man lying low on his horse's neck galloping headlong through the zone of death after them.
"Did you hear the bullets?" said Juanita breathlessly. "They were like the wind through the telegraph-wires. Oh, I should like to be a man; I should like to be a soldier!"
And she gave a low laugh of thrilling excitement.
The driver was now pulling up his horses. He too laughed aloud.
"It is the troops," he cried. "They thought we were the Carlists. But, who is this, Señoras? It is that man again."
He leant back and hastily twisted one of the carriage-lamps round in its socket so as to show a light behind him towards the newcomer.