“Thank you,” said Costal, delicately refusing the piece, but which Clara, less scrupulous, transferred to his pocket. “Thank you, cavallero! May I ask where you are going?”
“To the hacienda Las Palmas.”
“Las Palmas?”
“Yes—am I far from it?”
“Well,” replied Costal, “that depends on the road you take.”
“I wish to take the shortest. I am rather pressed for time.”
“Well, then—the road which is the shortest is not that which you will find the most easy to follow. If you wish to go by the one on which there is the least danger of your getting astray, you will follow up the course of this river. But if you wish a shorter route—one which avoids the windings of the stream—you will go that way.”
As Costal finished speaking, he pointed in a direction very different from that which he had indicated as the course of the river.
The Indian had no design of giving a false direction. Even had the little resentment, which he had conceived for the stranger, not entirely passed, he knew that he dared not mislead a traveller on the way to the hacienda, of which he was himself a servitor. But he no longer held any grudge against the young officer, and his directions were honestly meant.
While they were speaking, another of those terrible screams that had perplexed the traveller broke in upon the dialogue. It was the cry of the jaguar, and came from the direction in which lay the route indicated by Costal as the shortest.