“You meet highwaymen at the fords,” his father had said, “or did in my day, but I expect it’s all altered since then.”
“I wonder what that German meant,” he thought. “Perhaps that devil Bright Tooth may be playing some trick, but probably what he meant was that the floods are out. It will be rotten if I can’t get across.”
Then the question rose in his mind how far Anselmo was. “Twelve or fifteen miles,” he thought. “I can be there by 5 or 5.30 and I will be.”
He whacked up the horse into a solitude of rocky barren, densely grown with small thorn and prickly pear. The strangeness of the landscape, the blueness of the sky where the eagles were cruising for their prey and the glory of the adventure on which he rode made his ride a dream of delight for some miles, till the rocks on both sides of him grew in towards him, so that he rode in a kind of gully, where the hooves made more echo than he liked. The gloom of the place was made greater by the prevalence of the pudding-cactus, which exuded over his path like jellyfish flecked with blood or snakes which had been pressed to death. Multitudes of flies feasting on the stickiness of the plant gave it the appearance of corruption. In nearly all the puddles there were snakes. The noise of the echoes of the horse’s hooves became louder and louder. Hi, looking back, saw that a horse and man were coming after him.
The man was bent down in his seat with his sombrero jammed down over his eyes. He had a look of Bright Tooth. His horse looked like the dark chestnut mare which Hi had seen in the stable. She had seemed a beauty then, if a little small. She showed like a beauty now in the grace of her going.
“It’s Bright Tooth all right,” Hi thought. “I’ll bet he comes for no good.”
Seeing that he was seen, the man sat up and called to Hi to stop. He was certainly Bright Tooth.
“Why should I stop?” Hi thought. “I am not going to stop for a swine like that. Let him jolly well catch me up and explain.”
As he saw that Bright Tooth was not carrying a gun, he rode on, though Bright Tooth called repeatedly something about stopping or returning, to which Hi answered, “Si,” or “Bueno” or “That’s the ticket.” Bright Tooth pressed his horse up to Hi’s off quarter with the cry, “You Englishman return.” He motioned back towards the cross roads.
“I am not going to return,” Hi said.