“The first thing to do is to get away,” he repeated. “I’ll see that you have what you need to do that. Come!”
Canterac however hesitated to obey. He was looking back at Torre Bianca.
“Before I go,” he murmured, “I would like to say good-by to the marquesa.”
Robledo listened with a pitying smile to this plea. Then he took hold of him with paternal superiority.
“Let’s not lose time,” he said. “Look after yourself, and nobody else. The marquesa has other things to think about.”
And he took Canterac with him to his quarters.
All that day the town seethed with the news of the duel. Indeed some of the inhabitants treated the occasion as a holiday. In the main street thick groups of men and women gathered, talking, gesticulating, and casting hostile glances at the house that had once been the contractor’s. Torre Bianca’s name, and his wife’s, were bandied about even more frequently than those of the men who had fought the duel.
Some of the gauchos who were friends of Manos Duras passed in and out among the groups. Apparently the recent event had quite overshadowed the hostility existing between them and the people of the settlement.
In the middle of the afternoon Manos Duras himself came riding up the main street. He stared with profound interest at the dead man’s house. Some of the half-breed girls spoke to him. What did he think of that woman who made the men around her kill one another in cold blood?... But the notorious gaucho merely shrugged, and smiling contemptuously, passed on.
Three of his friends were waiting for him at the boliche. They were men who lived the greater part of the year in the foothills of the Andes. Recently they had been paying him a visit at his ranch. Under other circumstances don Roque would have been alarmed to learn of this fact. He would have suspected that these pals of the gaucho’s were preparing some shameless piece of cattle rustling. But at that particular moment the most important persons at the dam were giving the comisario far more to worry about than the thieving gauchos had ever done.