Pausing for minutes to think, losing the line of thought, beginning and never finishing his statements, yet somehow he communicated his fancy to Morales. The matador nodded; he also had seen the shawl-wrapped gliding figure. But the Frenchman pleaded ignorance of any such illusion.
Of a sudden now, as they squatted about the shrine, aware only of the ceaseless gnawings of their stomachs, from up the road came the crash as of a falling bounding stone. It was as if some one, moving along the cliff above their heads, had dislodged the stone from underfoot.
"It is he," said Carson, and he thought he added: "The unknown man." But the words died unsaid on his parched lips.
Morales nodded and continued to nod, his head wagging loosely like that of a mechanical toy. After an appreciable interval, he said, "He is prowling about us like a hungry wolf."
The tall, blond, mustached Frenchman seemed the strongest of all those once-strong men. He pulled out his large-calibered revolver. With none of the hesitancy of feebleness, he said:
"I shall go forward. I am the only one that can walk and see straight. If this unknown man is truly skulking about, I shall find out what he is doing up there ahead."
He left the pitiful cluster of men. Without any signs of dizziness or staggering, he walked between the boulders which bestrew the path. Bent sharply forward, revolver in hand, he disappeared around a turn of the road.
Abruptly, from beside the road and very near at hand, came then, loud and distinct, the sharp snapping of shrub twigs. The men squatting before the shrine looked about dully. Out of the gorse and bramble beside the road stepped the man whom they had seen following them all that day. He wore heavy rope sandals, sheepskin zamarra, a long serape and pointed mountaineer's hat. He was Jacinto Quesada.
Weakly the famished men reached for their weapons; but he smiled with friendliness and commiseration, and sat down among them.
"There is no need of force, senores," he said. "I am here of my own free will."