With fingers doubled up, he was busied rummaging amongst the sand with the eagerness of a famished jackal disinterring a corpse.
“Master Cuchillo! a word, if you please,” cried Pepé, drawing aside the branches of the cotton shrubs; “Master Cuchillo!”
But Cuchillo did not hear.
It was only when he had been called three times that he turned around, and discovered his excited countenance to the carabinier—after having, by a spontaneous movement of suspicion, thrown a corner of his mantle over the gold he had collected.
“Master Cuchillo,” resumed Pepé, “I heard you a little while ago give utterance to a philosophical maxim, which gave me the highest opinion of your character.”
“Come!” said Cuchillo to himself, wiping the sweat from his forehead, “here is someone else who requires my services. These gentry are becoming imprudent, but, por Dios! they pay handsomely.”
Then aloud:
“A philosophical maxim?” said he, throwing away disdainfully, a handful of sand, the contents of which would elsewhere have rejoiced a gold-seeker. “What is it? I utter many, and of the best kind; philosophy is my strong point.”
Pepé, on one side of the hedge, resting upon his rifle, in a superb attitude of nonchalance, and the most imperturbable sangfroid, and Cuchillo, on the other side, with his head stretched across the green inclosure of the little valley, looked very much like two country neighbours, for the moment chatting familiarly together.
No one, on seeing them thus, would have suspected the terrible catastrophe which was to follow this pacific intercourse. The countenance of the ex-carabinier, only exhibited a gracious smile.