"Jock," she said.
"Yes, what's up?" he grunted, hauling remorselessly on a line with a knee against the ass's circumference.
"A man," she said placidly. "He come along, too, behin' us."
"Eh? Where?" he demanded, putting a last knot to the tedious structure.
Incarnacion pointed to the bush. "I see him poke out hees head two times," she explained.
Scott passed his hand behind him to his revolver, and stared with narrow eyes along the green frontier at the bush. He could see nothing.
"A big man, 'Carnacion?" he asked. "Mustaches? Black hair?"
She nodded and lit another cigarette. "You know him, Jock?"
"I know him," he answered, and drove the donkeys on, thwacking the pack-ass cautiously for the sake of the load.
It was an anxious passage then, on the open beach. The men who followed had the cover of the shrubs; theirs was the advantage to choose the moment of collision. They could shoot at him from their concealment and flick his brains out comfortably before he could set eyes on them; or they could shoot the donkeys down, or put a bullet into Incarnacion where she rode, quiet and regardless of all. He flogged the beasts on to a trot with a hail of blows, and ran up into the bush to take an observation.