“You’ll have to cut the country, John,” he added suddenly, “they’ll have got your name uncommon pat. I did my best for you.” He had had me tied up like that before the runners’ eyes in order to take their suspicions off me. He had made a pretence to murder me with the same idea. But he didn’t believe they were taken in. “There’ll be warrants out before morning, if they ain’t too shaken. But what were you doing in the business? The two Spaniards were lying in the fern looking on when you come blundering your clumsy nose in. If it hadn’t been for Rooksby you might have——— Hullo, there!” he broke off.
An answer came from the black shadow of a clump of roadside elms. I made out the forms of three or four horses standing with their heads together.
“Come along,” Rangsley said; “up with you. We’ll talk as we go.”
Someone helped me into a saddle; my legs trembled in the stirrups as if I had ridden a thousand miles on end already. I imagine I must have fallen into a stupor; for I have only a vague impression of somebody’s exculpating himself to me. As a matter of fact, Ralph, after having egged me on, in the intention of staying at home, had had qualms of conscience, and had come to the quarry. It was he who had cried the watchword, “Snuff and enough,” and who had held the whispered consultation. Carlos and Castro had waited in their hiding-place, having been spectators of the arrival of the runners and of my capture. I gathered this long afterwards. At that moment I was conscious only of the motion of the horse beneath me, of intense weariness, and of the voice of Ralph, who was lamenting his own cowardice.
“If it had come at any other time!” he kept on repeating. “But now, with Veronica to think of!——— You take me, Johnny, don’t you?”
My companions rode silently. After we had passed the houses of a little village a heavy mist fell upon us, white, damp, and clogging. Ralph reined his horse beside mine.
“I’m sorry,” he began again, “I’m miserably sorry I got you into this scrape. I swear I wouldn’t have had it happen, not for a thousand pounds—not for ten.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said cheerfully.
“Ah, but,” Rooksby said, “you’ll have to leave the country for a time. Until I can arrange. I will. You can trust me.”
“Oh, he’ll have to leave the country, for sure,” Rangsley said jovially, “if he wants to live it down. There’s five-and-forty warrants out against me—but they dursent serve ’em. But he’s not me.”