"Nothing much. A little scratch."
"Let us dismount. You are pale. Let me assist you."
She gave him her uninjured hand and loosed her feet from the stirrup. Twilight fell across her eyes, resolving into huge, unsteady clouds swimming around and around her with increasing velocity. In dead faint she sank into Morando's arms.
The Captain removed the señora's long riding-glove, and found her wrist profusely bleeding from a small, but deep, perforation. The hawk had driven its talon in, full length.
"Come, amigos," Morando cried, "prepare a temporary couch for Señora Valentino by the roadside."
A dozen ponchos fell from caballeros' shoulders, and the women improvised a comfortable bed from them on the thickly interwoven green grass, the soldier holding the insensible woman in his arms the while. He laid her, still fainting, on the bed, softly odorous of the growing things about.
In tiny pulsings the blood flowed, reddening her light-colored riding-habit, and spattering the costly fabric of the ponchos.
The Captain bound his handkerchief tightly around her arm midway between wrist and elbow. The bleeding ceased.
"Señors, who among you has a flask of aguardiente?"
Several were offered.