“We will go in slowly,” El Diablo said in his deep resonant voice, “we want our friends to see us. We want them, if possible, to follow us to the meeting at the Palace.”

“We have friends in the town all right,” one of the men boasted.

“Never be sure of your friend until he fights beside you,” El Diablo responded, quoting a Mariposan proverb and making them all laugh.

“It’s Alejo who should be saying that, not us,” someone cried and there was more laughter.

The men were now looking to make quite certain that their pistols were loaded. It was a rigidly observed tradition that no gaucho should ever carry an unloaded gun.

Skye felt herself shiver. There was a law that no one should carry weapons in Mariposa, but it was disregarded like so many others. She remembered now how she had patted the revolver at her side when General Alejo’s Officer had warned her against going far into the interior.

As if he sensed her thoughts, El Diablo suddenly turned towards her and drew her own pistol from the pocket of his tweed coat.

“You had better take this,” he said.

She looked up at him in astonishment, too surprised to reach out her hand towards it.

“Why?

“You may need it,” he said.

She knew he was thinking that they might all be trapped and taken prisoner and yet still, for some unaccountable reason, she hesitated.

“I trust you today, at any rate, not to plug me in the back,” he said with a faint smile.

She took the pistol then and slipped it into the pocket of her bombachas. It was heavy against her leg and now for the first time she felt really afraid. This was no light-hearted joke. This was serious.

She had a vision of Jimmy in Valparaiso and of his horror if he knew what she was doing and then she realised that she would not miss this moment for anything in the world.

She considered what her feelings would have been if El Diablo had left her in the cave. She could imagine how long the day would have dragged.

She would have been wondering what was happening and longing with an almost physical ache for his return. It would have been a torture beyond words to have been left behind and she felt a sudden warm sense of gratitude towards him that he had brought her with him.

She was only a worry and a liability, she was well aware of that. There was always the fear too that she might be recognised and then she remembered the sunglasses in her pocket and put them on.