“Si, si, señor, I understand that. We know you are fighting for us, but still I have my livelihood to consider and my family, my wife and my four daughters.”

“You must have patience, my friend.”

El Diablo turned away abruptly and the farewells were not so good humoured this time as they rode away from the hacienda.

“Why can’t he find a market for his cattle?” Skye asked.

She had not meant to question El Diablo, but somehow her curiosity was too much for her.

Despite her own problems, she found herself becoming interested in those of other people. This farmer in an isolated hacienda, miles from anywhere – how could he live there if he was prevented from taking his cattle to Jācara? What was happening that things were worse apparently than they had been in the past?

“Are you really interested?”

She saw a twinkle in El Diablo’s eyes as if he had known that she had deliberately refrained from speaking to him until now.

“Yes, I am,” Skye answered truthfully.

They were having to go a little more slowly at this moment as they were passing over a small rocky ridge where the shrubs were so thick that it was impossible for the horses to move except at a walk.

The gauchos were behind them, well out of earshot, and anyhow, they spoke in English.

“Very well, then, I will tell you,” El Diablo said, “and it can be put in one word. Alejo!”

“Just him or his Government too?” Skye enquired.

“There is no Government apart from Alejo,” El Diablo replied. “He is surrounded by a small company of ‘yes men’ who call him ‘El Supremo’. Is any other description necessary?”

“Go on!” Skye said.

“A few months ago, Alejo decreed that the land North of Jācara was Government property and it was to be what you would call in England nationalised. Men who have had their farms here for hundreds of years were to be dispossessed of their land overnight for no reason at all that they could understand. This decree only concerned the North of the country, the country between Jācara and Brazil.”

“But why?” Skye asked.

“That is exactly what most people asked,” El Diablo said. “The answer lies in those mountains.”

“Why?” Skye enquired again.

El Diablo looked at her and looked away.

“I am telling you just as much as it is advisable for you to know,” he said. “It is sufficient for me to say that El Supremo has his reasons and very good ones at that. Unfortunately he reckoned without the opposition of the Indians who for years have made this part of the country their own. An Indian always wants land.