“Well!” said the caçadore, resuming his narration, “after a while we got a little over our fright—as one naturally does, you know—and then Manuel says to me, ‘Andres!’ ‘What is it, Manuel?’ said I. ‘Do you think,’ said he, ‘that blood would run out of a dead body?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said I; ‘not a drop.’ ‘I’ll bet you five pesos it will,’ challenged my camarado. ‘Done!’ said I; and then, to settle the thing, we—I acknowledge it—did run our machetés through the body of the Custos—of course, we could do him no harm then.”
“Monsters!” exclaimed Herbert; “it was almost as bad as killing him! What a horrid tale! Ha! you wretches, notwithstanding its ingenuity, it’ll not save your necks from a halter!”
“Oh, señorito,” said Andres, appealingly, “we’ve done nothing to deserve that. I can assure you we are both right sorry for what we’ve done. Ain’t you sorry, Manuel?”
“Carrai! that I am,” earnestly answered Manuel.
“We both regretted it afterwards,” continued Andres, “and to make up for what we had done, we took the cloak and spread it decently over the body—in order that the poor alcalde should rest in peace.”
“Liar!” cried Quaco, throwing the light of his cocuyo on the corpse. “You did no such thing; you stabbed him through the cloak. Look there!”
And as Quaco gave this indignant denial, he pointed to the cuts in the cloth to prove the falsehood of the Spaniard’s statement.
“Carrai-ai-i!” stammered out the confounded Andres. “Sure enough there’s a cut or two. Oh, now I recollect: we first covered him up. It was after we did that, we then made the bet—didn’t we, Manuel?”
Manuel’s reply was not heard: for at that instant the hoof-strokes of horses were heard in front of the hut; and the shadowy forms of two horsemen could be distinguished just outside the doorway.
It was the black groom, who had returned from Content, accompanied by the overseer of the estate.