“Not a bad beginning,” quietly observes the gambusino, as they stand over the fallen game. “Is it, señorito?”
“Anything but that,” answers the young Englishman, delighted at having secured such a good bottom for their bag. “But what are we to do with them? We can’t carry them along.”
“Certainly not,” rejoins the Mexican. “Nor need. Let them lie where they are till we come back. But no,” he adds, correcting himself. “That will never do. There are wolves up here, no doubt—certainly coyotes, if no other kind—and on return we might find only feathers. So we must string them up out of reach.”
The stringing up is a matter which occupies only a few minutes’ time; done by one leg thrust through the opened sinew of the other to form a loop; then the birds hoisted aloft, and hung upon the up-curving arms of a tall pitahaya.
“And now, on!” says the gambusino, after re-loading guns. “Let us hope we may come across something in the four-legged line, big enough to give everybody a bit of fresh meat for dinner. Likely we’ll have to tramp a good way before sighting any; the report of our guns will have frighted both birds and beasts, and sent all to the farthest side of the mesa. But no matter for that. I want to go there direct, and at once, for a reason, muchacho, I’ve not yet made known to you.”
While speaking, an anxious expression has shown itself on the gambusino’s face, which, taken in connection with his last words, leads Henry Tresillian to suspect something in, or on, his mind, beside the desire to kill game. Moreover, before leaving the camp he had noticed that the Mexican seemed to act in a manner more excited than was his wont—as if in a great hurry to get away. That, no doubt, for the reason he now hints at; though what it is the young Englishman cannot even give a guess.
“May I know it now?” he asks, with some eagerness, noting the grave look.
“Certainly you may, and shall,” frankly responds the Mexican. “I would have told you sooner, and the others as well, but for not being sure about it. I didn’t like to cause an alarm in the camp without good reason. And I hope still there’s none. After all it may not have been smoke.”
“Smoke! What?”
“What I saw, or thought I saw, yesterday evening, just after we arrived by the lake’s edge.”