El Zapote looked for some moments with fixed gaze upon the royalist fugitive, who with the felt hat of an insurgent, the jacket of an infantry soldier, and the pantaloons of a dragoon officer, presented a somewhat motley appearance.
“You are a man who has just dropped down from a tree,” said he. “I will not deny that fact; but if you are the only one about here, I should say there is a royalist in this wood, that these fellows are about to hunt to death.”
“On my side I shall be frank with you,” answered Don Rafael. “You have guessed rightly: I am in the King’s cause.”
“These shouts,” continued Zapote, “the meaning of which I understand full well, denote that there is a royalist hidden in these woods, who is to be taken dead or alive. Have the men who are pursuing you ever seen you?”
“I killed two of their number yesterday evening. There were others who, no doubt, saw me.”
“Then there is no hope of my being able to pass you off as an ordinary prisoner, like my companion here, who is neither royalist nor insurgent.”
“It is very doubtful, to say the least,” remarked Don Rafael, in a desponding tone.
“Altogether impossible; but I can promise you one thing, however: that we shall not betray you, should we fall in with these pursuers. Moreover, I shall endeavour to throw them off your scent: for I am beginning to tire of this brigand life of theirs. On one condition, how ever.”
“Name it!” said the Colonel.
“That you will permit us to part company with you. I can do nothing to save you—you know it—while you may only ruin us, without any profit to yourself. On the other hand your fate has become in a manner linked with ours; and to abandon you in the midst of danger would be a baseness for which I could never pardon myself.”