“Yes, you should go first thing in the morning. She will need you.”
But that was not Basil’s meaning. “I shall go to-night,” he said. “And if the tao will not take me across in a canoe some of my men—some of my old company, I mean—will do it.”
The tao refused, fearing the dark, and not loving him on account of the hanging of Juan Vagas; but when, after obtaining the permission of his successor, he asked for four men to paddle and one to steer, every member of the company stepped forward to volunteer. He selected the old serjeant, and four of those who had been with him on the mountain-side when Felizardo’s bolomen killed three quarters of his force; and they started out through the night to paddle to Igut.
After a while, he turned to the serjeant, who was steering. “The Captain of the Scouts at Igut has been killed,” he said.
The serjeant nodded. “I know, Senor. I heard the news an hour ago. I was expecting it,” he added calmly.
Basil looked at him in astonishment. “You were expecting it? Why?”
The little man smiled meaningfully. “Just after they buried the wife of Felizardo, over there in San Polycarpio, Captain Bush struck his wife twice on the mouth. They were on the balcony, and down in the plaza, sitting in the shadow of the belfry, were three of Felizardo’s men, who saw it all. Hearing that, and knowing how Felizardo had loved his own wife, Dolores—did he not take to the hills for her sake?—I knew that Captain Bush must die by the bolo.”
Basil clenched his hands. So he had struck her, in the sight of natives, too! And she had never given him a hint of it, nor had Don Juan Ramirez. Then, very reverently, he thanked God that he had not known; for, had he heard of it before, he would assuredly have shot Captain Bush like a dog; and that, as he realised now, would have made matters infinitely worse.
The night seemed very beautiful as they paddled across the bay. Just before they came to the entrance of Igut harbour, the moon rose from behind Felizardo’s mountains, and Basil found himself wondering how he could ever have regarded the range as a place of horror and death, in which you set foot at the risk of your life. Surely all that must have been an evil dream.
Igut was asleep when he landed there, and no light was showing in Mrs Bush’s house; but old Don Juan was still sitting up. “I thought you might come,” the Spaniard said. “Two men, who landed a couple of hours ago, said they had seen you, and you had heard the news.”