"Hola, mis serranos!" called Quesada. "Fetch forth your beasts. The caballeros would look at them and pay you well in golden notes on the Bank of Spain!"
A little later, the cavalcade wound down the loops of the goat path. In all the pueblo, there had proved to be only three burden-bearing animals—two mules and one ass. However, Morales' cuadrilla had been depleted by the loss through the plague of Alfonso Robledo and Coruncho Lopez, and the death in the rebellion of the banderillero, Baptista Monterey; so the party managed, by doubling up, to make shift.
There were altogether seven of them. Morales and the three surviving men of the cuadrilla paired off on the two mules. Felicidad, still pale from her faint and pensive with longing, jogged behind Carson on the crupper of the sturdy sure-footed ass.
Quesada laughed when they begged him also to mount one of the mules.
"It would be too much for the animal. And besides," he added with a return of his old pride, "I am the Wolf of the Sierras. My long mountaineer's legs are swifter to move now and even more tireless than the slow hoofs of any stupid borrico. Hold your peace, mis camaradas. Ere nightfall, you shall see!"
Accoutred in the neat gray tweeds and slouch hat of the deceased Frenchman, he led the way with swinging strides. Long after they had disappeared down the gorge, the mountain boy Gabriel, yellow of skin and oddly wrinkled of face, stood on the rock at the brink of the village and sought to follow them with his wistful eyes.
The cavalcade convoluted through the gorges. Never once did they sight the senor doctor. Mounted as he was on the nag, slow with age yet swifter-paced than the ambling donkeys, the hidalgo had easily put dust and distance between them, and buried himself in the lower passes.
They came, in the due course of nights and days, to the mournful Pass of the Blessed Trinity. There were three diverging roads leading out and down from it. Quesada, many yards in the lead, waited until the cavalcade overtook him. Then pointing to that dusty road which snaked most sweepingly to the left, he said:
"Felicidad will now recognize the way. That road winds through the Alpujarras and directly down into Granada. For myself, I bid thee adios!"
Felicidad exclaimed in surprise and deep disappointment: