Children kept darting out of the gutters, women leaned from the balconies to throw flowers to the riders, many of the gauchos catching a rose and slipping it behind their ears.

“El Diablo! El Diablo!”

The streets rang with his name. It was difficult for Skye to see his face, but she thought that he must be smiling. There was no doubt that he was welcome or that he was indeed a popular figure in the town.

Alejo would resent this, she thought, for Dictators are not fond of rivals. At the same time it would strengthen El Diablo’s hand when it came to striking a bargain.

A rose came flying through the air to land on Skye’s saddle. As she caught it, she saw that it had been thrown by a pretty dark-haired girl who, with several others, was leaning from a high balcony.

True to the part she must play, Skye waved an acknowledgment for the flower and the girls giggled with delight.

At that moment she heard a cry,

“Danger! Danger!”

It was the shrill voice of a man frantic with fear and it rose high above the laughter and cheering of the crowd.

“Danger! Go back! Go back!”

Skye could see now who was shouting. A young man who came running towards them down the hill, hatless, his face dripping with sweat, his whole body strained forward with his haste.

Instinctively Skye tightened her hold on the reins and checked her horse. She saw El Diablo’s back in front of her suddenly tense.

Then came the crack of a rifle and the boy, for he was nothing more, toppled forward onto the cobbles.

It seemed to Skye as if there was one second of poignant silence and then the screaming of a hundred voices was drowned almost immediately by a fusillade of shots.

They were fired from further up the street. Bullets whizzed past Skye’s head and she heard a man behind her give a sudden hoarse cry.

El Diablo wheeled his horse.

“Turn back,” he ordered.

Then, amidst the screaming and confusion of the crowd and the rearing frightened horses, as Skye tried to turn, she saw it happen.

El Diablo’s horse crumpled under him and, even as he fell, she threw herself from her own saddle.

She was aware that the gauchos were shooting over her head. They had all drawn their revolvers and were firing in response to the fire directed at them.

Then, as she reached the ground and ran towards El Diablo, impelled by some instinct beyond thought, she saw that he was hit.

He had fallen from his horse and was lying sprawled in the roadway. Among the babel of sound, screams and cries, the crack and whine of rifle- and pistol fire, Skye was conscious only of El Diablo lying free of his dead horse, his head in the dust, blood pouring from his forehead.