The nine men exchanged glances of disappointment and dismay. They had been altogether off in their guess. Jacinto Quesada had not stopped in passing to hobnob with the Gypsies. He had not passed that way at all. The cabalgadores felt themselves like beagles who mill around and bark in vain braggadocio. Jacinto Quesada had shaken them off his heels. Neither sight nor smell of their game had they.
At this disheartening stage, suddenly from the forest a nut-brown girl in a green dress came out and stood before them. She was round limbed and delicately graceful as any nymph or naiad of the glens and waterfalls. Her dye-black hair hung loose upon her shoulders; two spots of hot crimson burned on the roundness of her cheeks; and her eyes pulsed like fiery opals. She seemed all aflame with some strong emotion. In a throaty shaking voice, she cried out:
"My father lies! This Aguilino whom I have never seen before—he too lies! Jacinto Quesada has been here, in this very spot! He came to this barranca in the dark of last night—he and three dorados and a tall ungraceful wench, pale as a sickly lily! They were given food, they were given shelter for the night. Then went away but two hours ago. They went on up the canyon!"
A sharp gust of wind shrilled through the barranca, rattling among the trees overhead. The sky seemed suddenly to darken, the day to grow colder. Pepe Flammenca snarled aloud, between bared fangs, in the gerigonza of the Gypsies which the strangers did not understand:
"You horrible flea, you maggot of the dung, you vile daughter of an unfaithful mother! Into my tan and say not another word! For every word you have said, you shall pay with ten lashes of greenhide across your bare back!"
The cabalgadores could not know what he said, but they sensed the threat shaking his voice. No one spoke or made a move. The girl looked at her father a moment with eyes like cold gloomy mountain lakes, then moved slowly toward the large tent of the hetman. Her lips were set in a disdainful and a triumphant smile.
About the clearing and above her head, the trees shook and swayed as in an agony. Three great drops of water fell with the weight of leaden bullets and made slow stains upon her green gown. The dog-grass, vetch and darnels of the clearing lifted up and seemed to drink the air. A storm was approaching. Leaves whirled about like a hundred excited birds.
Of a sudden, the girl Paquita paused near the tent to turn her head and fling back the words:
"I have not lied! Though my father will beat me for it, I have told the truth! I hate Jacinto Quesada!"
"Say another word, thou child of a witch-woman and a demon!" sibilated Pepe Flammenca in the Gypsy gerigonza, "and I will kill thee with my bare hands!"