eparating from them, Gaspar gives the signal for action, and all three
become engaged in getting ready their horses for a return to the plain.

"_Por Dios_!" mutters the gaucho, while slipping on his bridle. "I
don't much fancy remaining longer in this melancholy place. Though high
and airy, it mayn't be wholesome. If, after all, that brown beauty
should change her mind, and play us false, we'd be in a bad predicament
up here--a regular trap, with no chance of retreating from it. So the
sooner we're back to the bottom of the hill, the safer 'twill be. There
we'll at least have some help from the speed of our horses, if in the
end we have to run for it. Let us get below at once!"

Having by this finished adjusting his bridle, he hands the rein to
Cypriano, adding--

"You hold this, senorito, while I go after Shebotha. Botheration take
that old hag! She'll be a bother to us, to say nothing of the extra
weight for our poor horses. After all, she's not very heavy--only a bag
of bones."

"But, Gaspar; are you in earnest about our taking her along with us?"
asks Cypriano.

"How are we to help it, _hijo mio_! If we leave her here, she'd be back
in the town before we could get started; that is, if we have the good
luck to get started at all. I needn't point out what would be the
upshot of that. Pursuit, as a matter of course, pell mell, and
immediate. True, we might leave her tied to the post, and muffled as
she is. But then she'd be missed by to-morrow morning, if not sooner,
and they'd be sure to look for her up here. No likelier place for such
as she, among these scaffolds; except tied to a scaffold of another
sort, and in a somewhat different style."

The gaucho pauses, partly to enjoy his own jest, at which he is
grinning, and partly to consider whether Shebotha can be disposed of in
any other way.

Cypriano suggests another, asking--

"Why couldn't we take her in among these trees, and tie her to one of
them? There's underwood thick enough to conceal her from the eyes of
anyone passing by, and with the muffle over her head, as now, she
couldn't cry out that they'd hear her."

"'Twould never do," rejoins Gaspar, after an instant of reflection.
"Hide her as we might, they'd find her all the same. These redskins,
half-naked though they are, can glide about among bushes, even thorny
ones, like slippery snakes. So many of them, they'd beat every bit of
thicket within leagues, in less than no time.