She wanted to fight him, she raised her hand weakly to batter against his chest, but she was too exhausted and could only lie limp and impotent in his arms struggling for breath.

Only gradually abating the speed of his horse, El Diablo galloped some way before he turned and then, as he slowed down, he spoke.

He looked down at Skye’s half-hidden face, the dark lashes over closed eyes, the parted lips, the quivering nostrils, the tumultuous rise and fall of her tortured breasts.

“You little fool,” he said softly. “Did you think you could escape me?”

She hardly heard him.

There was only the black misery of knowing that she had failed.

The sun, crimson and large, was sinking into a great green sea of grass and all around rose the sweet fluting notes of the partridges, bird answering bird.

Skye heard them as if in a trance and then she heard too the gauchos as they caught up with them, cheering a brilliant feat of horsemanship on the part of their leader. And cheering as well the capture of a fugitive!

Chapter 6

Skye spread out the American dollar notes in her hand as if they were a pack of cards, shuffled them together and spread them out again, adding several more notes of high denomination that had lain at her side on the couch.

The Indian was watching her movements, she was sure of that, although his lean face, which might have come to life from an Egyptian frieze, was expressionless.

She added up the notes that she held, three dollars short of one hundred. It was a fortune to a native of Mariposa!

The Indian set the glasses carefully on the table, yet, before he turned to fetch the cutlery, she saw his eyes, under his thick eyelashes, flicker towards the money.

His skin was the colour of ripe tobacco leaves and his jet-black hair hung down on to the collar of his shirt. He was young, he was handsome, he was greedy. Skye was certain of it, so certain that she spread out the notes again and then deliberately let one flutter away to fall on the floor between her couch and the Indian.

He bent to pick it up and hand it back to her and as he did so she smiled.

“Thank you. What is your name?”

“I am called Yokseyi, señora,” he replied, his voice making new music of the Spanish tongue, quelling its excitement, slowing its hurry to a lazy drone.

“Have you been here long?”

“Only a few weeks, señora.”

That was what she wanted to know, for it would be no use attempting to bribe one of the men who had been with El Diablo a long time. Strange though it may seem, they were devoted to him and almost fanatical loyalty showed in their faces.

They treated him, she thought scornfully, as if he was a God rather than a man.