“Warm work, señor!”
Receiving no answer, he grinned and gently tapped the side of his nose. “They are all that way—at first,” he confided in the stars. “But wait till the priest ties them so that neither can wriggle without the other. Wait!”
A cough also passing unnoticed, he walked over and knelt beside Ramon. With a heavy shake of the head, he passed to the revolutionists. Three were dead, but, though unconscious, Ilarian still breathed stertorously.
“The worse for thee, amigo,” the arriero addressed him. “The old señor Icarza will pay well to do thy killing with his own hands. By sunrise, mañana, I should have thee to him, and then”—he gave a little sinister nod at the dead—“and then thou wilt be envying these.”
A glance at the lovers having shown them to be, to all intents and purposes, still alone under the stars, he went off, shaking his head, to bring up the mules. “Santa Maria Marisima! to think that I, also, was once so foolish!”
On his return he gathered up the arms, belts, knives, bandoliers of cartridges, guns—it has to be written, also stripping the khaki coats and riding-boots from the dead. “They will serve thee no more after the old señor finishes,” he addressed the unconscious Ilarian, as he tore off his.
While he was packing his loot in an orderly and methodical manner on the mules a murmur of talk rose behind him. But as it was couched in English he was saved from further reflections.
“Oh—dear!” Lee’s exclamations, partially smothered in a rough and dirty shirt, still conveyed a curious mixture of confidence and fear, regret, relief, sorrow, and happiness, hope and doubt. “Oh—dear! I used to be so independent and fearless. Now—I feel so weak.”
“Time you did.” A hug mitigated the severity of the comment. “After this perhaps you will let me do a little of your thinking?”
“For a while.” The shirt choked a little, perverse laugh. “Till I get over it.”