Turning at a call, Lee and Gordon saw him coming down a long slope, and, as he drew nearer, she recognized the mozo who had brought Ramon’s message from El Sol.
“Que? Filomena?”
As he answered, in rapid Spanish, sudden distress wiped out her happiness. “Oh, Betty is ill!” she translated for Gordon. “Mary Mills sent word to El Sol and asked them to send for me. Filomena can act as my escort, so it won’t be necessary for you—” She paused, anticipating rebellion.
It came. “Bull told me that you were not to ride alone. I wouldn’t let you, anyway.”
If she made a little face, she was still secretly pleased. “That’s what one gets for being a girl, but I suppose I’ll have to put up with it.” Turning to the mozo, she gave him his orders in Spanish: “The señor will go with me. You may ride on to Los Arboles and tell Don Sliver, the gringo señor, where we have gone.”
Disconcertion showed through the man’s peon immobility. But with an obsequious “Si, señorita!” he rode on, but stopped over the next rise, dismounted, and crawled back to the crest on his belly.
Lying there, he watched them riding in a direction that showed them to be taking the short cut through the hills. Till they passed out of sight he lay quietly. Then, after carefully clearing a patch of ground, he built a small fire of the dry grass and twigs and covered it with the succulent green leaves of a Spanish bayonet.
Instantly there rose on the still air a dense smoke column. Till it soared to its full height he waited. Then, alternately covering and lifting his scrape from the fire, he sent a succession of great smoke puffs rolling on high. Whereafter he stamped out the fire and, grinning, mounted and rode away.
About that time Lee and Gordon were entering the ravine. A slight embarrassment rose between them as they drew near the fonda. But in place of Felicia’s smooth, dark face the wrinkled, purblind visage of old Antonio appeared at the bar window, where he was serving an arriero whose loaded mules cropped the lush grass along the stream.
As they passed Lee looked quickly at Gordon. But meeting and reading her glance, he laughed and raised his right hand in attestation. Disarmed, she shook her finger, and the next minute their horses had scrambled around the bend, past the spot whence she had looked down and seen the kiss, into neutral territory.