“Let us go now, Señor, it is growing hot. It is almost noon, and you are faint. Let us ride on, and I will point out the way that you must take when we have crossed the face of the hill. Then comes a slight descent, Señor, and upon the little plain that lies between that and the cañon of the Water-pots will the troop stop for the nooning. This has been a rapid march. Doña Isabel will feel all the safer when she is once on the highway. But as for us, Señor, we must part company. You will find a better servant; I should but ill serve your grace. You know yourself I am but a stupid fellow, and it is only the patience of your grace that has been equal to my ignorance.”
Ashley heard neither the excuses of Pepé nor his own praises, but with a gesture at once commanding and entreating the servant to leave him, said: “Pepé, I had forgotten. There is something which will keep me still at Tres Hermanos. The Señora Doña Isabel must pardon me. Go! go to your duty, as I must to mine. God! how could I have forgotten it? Oh John, John! does time and distance make men so unnatural? Is it possible I could leave the place where you were so foully murdered, without knowing why or by whom? Who killed him, and why was the deadly and secret blow struck? Ah, that involves the question of the very mystery I came here to fathom, and which I was turning my back upon; for I am convinced that it is here, and not by following Doña Isabel Garcia, that it may be solved. She is too resolute, too astute; nothing is to be forced or beguiled from her lips! But now that the spell of her presence is removed, I may learn everything from these people, who with all their cunning and clannish devotion can surely be influenced by reasons such as I can give.”
“Who would have guessed the sight of a grave would so stir the blood?” soliloquized Pepé. “Can it be that Chinita—But no, she was more in jest than earnest; she always laughed at the niña Chata for her sorrow for the foreigner.—Well, all must die!” he said aloud. “Believe me, Señor, after all these years a knife-thrust is a little matter to inquire into. Caramba! Chinita herself would tell you that to turn back on a journey because of the dead is an omen of evil; ’twas not for that she would have me show you the grave of your countryman,—God rest him!”
Ashley looked at him keenly. “Ah,” he said, “it is then no accident that you have brought me here? God! what a mystery! Pepé, tell Chinita I know her thoughts, and that I never will rest till I prove them right or wrong. She is a strange creature, and likely to prove an enigma to more men than myself. Poor lad, she is not for you to dream of.”
“I will not see her again till I can tell her that which shall please her,” said Pepé. “Look you, Señor, she is one who will have the world turn to suit her.”
“A wilful girl,” thought Ashley, with judicial disapproval. “She has all the craftiness and deceit of the Indian and the pride and passion of a Spaniard; yet what if I should follow her? No, no! mere circumstance and conjecture shall not turn me!—Adios, Pepé,” he said aloud, “and beware! It is Doña Isabel you serve, and not the young girl who has bewitched you.”
Pepé smiled vaguely; his glance roved over the landscape. “Her heart is virgin honey in a cup of alabaster!” he murmured. Ashley was becoming accustomed to the poetic expressions of these unlettered rancheros, and with some impatience took in his own hand the bridle-rein of his horse, and reminding Pepé that it was nearly noon, and that he would be missed should he longer delay, bade him mount and hasten with messages of excuse to Doña Isabel for his own sudden return to Tres Hermanos.
With the customary apparent submission of a peasant, Pepé prepared to obey. He was in fact anxious to set forth as soon as he could be certain that no straggler was near to mark his movements. The troops and their followers had disappeared. “The Señor Don ’Guardo should leave this solitary spot on the instant,” he said with genuine concern; “in these days of revolution, one can never say what dangerous people may be wandering abroad.”
“I have nothing to fear from them,” answered Ashley, “unless it should be that they might attempt to rob me of the horse Doña Isabel has lent me. Well, for its sake, I will be prudent; though in truth the sight of a ghost in this desolate spot of sunken graves would seem more probable than that any living being should pass here. Now, then, good-by, Pepé.”
“Until our next meeting, Señor!” replied Pepé, gravely lifting his hat. He had attached himself to Ashley, and it seemed to him an evil omen that they should part at a grave, and he thus attempted to console himself by the pretence that it was but for a little while. “For a short time Señor, and God keep you!”