"It is a promise!"
"Vaya, Don Jaime!"
"Con Dios, Jacintito!"
Garbed in the once elegant clothes of the dead Frenchman, even to his slouch traveling hat, Quesada sat deep in the doctor's saddle and carefully guided the old rawboned nag down the loops of the goat path.
He kept a wary eye out for the policemen. The Guardias Civiles might chance to be lingering on in the gorge. But the trampled space about the alder tree was wholly deserted; the ashes from the breakfast fire of the day before were being rapidly dissipated by the draughty wind.
He pushed on down. Crackling over the fallen leaves in the gorges, clattering along the stony hogbacks and ridges, he came, in the waning afternoon, to the boulder-strewn pocket of the Christ of the Pass. And suddenly from below, louder than the ring of his horse's hoofs, there echoed up to him a sharp sound like the report of a pistol.
Come of long outlawry, Quesada was circumspectly cautious. The report might have exploded near at hand; the chances were that, with the odd carrying knack of sounds high on mountains, it had echoed, clear and distinct, from far away. But he would take no chances.
The ragged prickly gorse and huge boulders, which bestrewed the pass about the foot of the cross, furnished unusual hiding places. He dismounted hastily, tied his horse behind a sumach bush and, behind a tall boulder, hid himself.
Twilight deepened quickly into full dark night. It was gruesome waiting there beneath the pale white figure of the Saviour, with its crown of black horsehair and red-painted wounds. Save for the wind sweeping through the pass with little shrill noises, nothing stirred or sounded in the long defile.
After a little, Quesada conquered his vague apprehensions sufficiently to sup upon the cold sausages, dry bread, and bota of wine which he had had the forethought to sling to the cantle of his saddle. Then it was on again, through the dark night and the savage uncouth pass, in haste to accomplish his errand for the doctor.