or. A
revolver, his own small odds and ends, all his money, and such food as
he could lay hands on--by rousing reluctant storekeepers with outcries
and expediting commerce with violence--were got together. Then
Incarnacion must be fetched. She came at once, smiling drowsily, with
a flush of sleep on her little ardent face and all her belongings in a
bundle no bigger than a hat-box. But, with all his urgency, the
eastern sky was stained with dawn before he was clear of the town,
bludgeoning the donkeys before him, with the gear on one and
Incarnacion laughing and crooning on the other.

The beach stretched in a yellow bow on either hand, fringed with bush
and palms, receding to where the ultimate jaws of the bay stood black
and thin against the sunrise. Once upon it, they could be seen by
whoever should look from the town, and there was peremptory occasion
for haste. Scott had counted on forcing the journey into a little over
an hour, but he was not prepared for the eccentricities of a pack
adjusted on a donkey's back by an amateur. There is no art in the
world more arbitrary than that of tying a package on a beast. It must
be done just so, with just such a hitch and such an adjustment of the
burden, or one's rope might as well be of sand. These refinements were
outside Scott's knowledge, and he had not gone far before he saw his
bags and bundles clear themselves and tumble apart. There was a halt
while he picked them up and lashed them on the ass anew. Again and
again it happened, till his patience was raw; and all the time the
steady sun swarmed up the sky and day grew into full being.

Incarnacion sat serenely in her place while these troubles occupied
him, smoking her cigarette and looking about her. He was involved in
an effort to jam the pack and the donkey securely in one overwhelming
intricacy of knots when she called to him.

"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 cig