“With pleasure.”
Faint though it was, the smile that loosened the firm mouth made it easier for Seyd to continue when they were riding once more side by side. “For the young lady’s sake I am glad to have you take such a sensible view of an unavoidable situation. I take it that you were going the other way. If you can trust me—”
“Trust no one and you will never be deceived. If I had my way of it there would be an end to the girl’s wild tricks. But since she will be abroad, what better escort could she have than her kinsman?”
“None,” Seyd agreed. “I overtook her by accident, cared for her the best that I could; now she is in your hands.”
Sebastien shook his head. “Not so swiftly. She would hardly thank me for your dismissal.” While the shadow of a smile lifted the corner of his thin lips he added: “The last time I mixed in her affairs she refused to speak with me for over a year, and I have no mind to repeat the experience. We are all going to San Nicolas. It would be foolish to ride apart.”
“Very well,” Seyd agreed, not, however, with any great degree of pleasure. Apart from the strain involved by a day’s travel with a man who had just confessed to a permanent intention of killing him he felt more disappointment than he would have cared to admit at the spoiling of the tête-à-tête with the girl. In fact, the feeling was so acute that he found it necessary to justify it in his own thought. “It was only for a day,” he mused, slightly changing his previous conclusion to fit the case, “and I’d like to have seen it out.”
“So! so! The storm proved a little too much for this one.”
They had just ridden into copal woods, and, looking up, Seyd saw that he was pointing at a pile of bones and wet tatters of clothing that lay under a swinging fray of rope. If possible, it was more grisly of appearance than a second mummy which still swung, clicking its miserable bones in the wind. Whether or no he noticed Seyd’s shiver of disgust Sebastien ran easily on:
“He was a stout rogue, this fellow, with a keen eye for a pretty woman and small scruples as to how he got her. It was, indeed, through this little weakness that we caught him, using a girl to bait the trap. But he died game—with a joke on his lips. ‘Señor,’ he said, as the mule went from under him, ‘if but one-half of my brats walk in my steps thou wilt have need of an army to finish us up.’