Quesada called Pepe Flammenca aside. He had become possessed of a new idea. He and the Gypsy chieftain put their heads together. Then Quesada called Rafael Perez over to them with a beckon of the hand. Perez, too, joined in the low-whispered zipizape of words. An impudent and fantastic intrigue was plotted out, then and there, by that assorted trinity. As they separated again, Jacinto Quesada asked with sudden doubt:
"Will it be very difficult to change the appearance of Perez?"
"Not for Pepe Flammenca! Am I not of the Zincali? We of the Zincali can make a young horse seem old and decrepit, and an old horse show as much fire and hauteur as an unbroken stallion! And chachipe! we can change a black horse to white, and a piebald one to the color of tobacco! It is very simple, Don Jacinto, for the Children of Egypt."
"If you can make me pleasing to look at," chuckled Rafael Perez, "you will do wonders!"
Then he and Pepe Flammenca went together into the tent of the Gypsy chieftain, a more imposing tent than the others. His horse thereupon was led back behind the wagons and its harness hung upon the limb of a tree.
"Let us not tarry now. Aupa, you!" commanded Jacinto Quesada.
At the command, Pio Estrada and Ignacio Garcia flung themselves upon their horses. Quesada stood beside the horse of Felicidad and made a cup of his hands. The golden-haired girl put her little foot in the cup and was lifted into the saddle.
Then Quesada walked over to the tent of Pepe Flammenca to say a final word to Rafael Perez. Unaided by a mirror, Rafael Perez was shaving himself with care and yet with extreme haste. Pepe Flammenca sat cross-legged at his feet, mixing a dark stew of pigments in an age-blackened calabash.
"I go, Rafael Perez," said Jacinto Quesada, poking his head under the flap. "I abandon you to your vices, and to Manuel Morales and his cabalgadores. Be prudent and discreet and sagacious, for henceforth you must enterprise single-handed and under cover. And may God go with thee!"
"And with thee, Don Jacinto of my soul!"