“Is this the way to Anselmo?” Hi asked. The man looked blank. Hi repeated the question, more than once; after a while the woman came to the door.
“Anselmo?” she asked.
“Si, si, Anselmo.”
“Por aqui, Anselmo.”
She was a willowy woman, all slink and gleam, with a speck in one eye and something swollen in lip and nose.
“This is, then, the way to Anselmo,” Hi said. “La via a Anselmo? The calle or route a l’Anselmo?”
“Si, si,” the woman said, nodding.
The first wish of the couple, to get the stranger away from the hut, without letting him peep inside, now changed to another wish: a strange look passed between them, which made Hi uneasy. The man had enormous fore-arm muscles: his right fore-arm had been bruised or scraped quite recently. In his trousers he had a gun pocket which plainly had been used for a gun, though no gun was there at the moment.
“Por aqui, Anselmo,” the man said, taking Hi’s bridle and turning the horse away from the shack.
“He show you,” the woman said in English.