“They may, but that and the road are the only ways to Anselmo.”
“Well, we’d better try both. Why not send my old English murderer from Medinas? He’d go like a shot and you could trust him absolutely.”
“That is an idea, Hi. I suppose he can ride?”
“He was a stable-lad in his youth. He was even a jockey once, of sorts, I think they said, but he was warned off for something or other. I know he sounds awful; so he is, as well as a little mad, but I know that you could trust him.”
“You say that he is mad? Could he remember a message?”
“Yes.”
“All he’ll have to remember is, ‘Reds have seized Carlotta: come at once’; that and the address, ‘Don Manuel, Encinitas.’ ”
“He’ll have to know more than that,” Hi said. “He’ll have to get the horses out of these Elena people, at Anselmo.”
“Our code word, Dorothea, will do that.”
“And suppose the Elenas aren’t there?”