“El Cabeza sent me with Juan to get the señora’s letters. I see the beautiful ship that belongs to the señora and I talk with the Captain. He very nice man. He ask many questions about where the señora stay. Is it a big estancia, owned by nice people and is the señora happy? El Cabeza told Juan what to reply and the Captain, he delighted with what he hear, but as we come home I think about it. I remember Yokseyi, how he was whipped for taking the señora’s money. But he was a fool. He try to slip past the guards. I, Pedro, am much too clever to do anything like that.”

“Yes, yes. I understand, let’s hurry,” Skye said, impatient of Pedro’s volubility, realising that precious time was slipping by.

She spurred her horse into a gallop as she spoke and there was no time for further conversation until, far away from the camp, they left the plains for the mountains.

Skye had noted the curious formation of these mountains before when she was riding with El Diablo. The camp was situated where they crossed the country from North to South. It was a very narrow ridge, not that high and trailing away eventually into nothingness.

The main chain made a barrier between Mariposa and Brazil. Rugged, barren and independent of law and order like some stupendous stairway to Heaven, the mountains glowed in every colour from warm red to deep purple under the burning sun.

Pedro led the way through the great bushes of heliotrope, yellow calceolaria and prickly cactus that covered the foothills until, climbing higher, they came to a narrow rocky path, so steep at times as to make Skye cling to her saddle lest she should slip off her horse’s back, and at other times twisting round deep gulleys so sheer as to make her afraid to look down into them.

These mountains, Skye knew, were the home of the wild animals of Mariposa and she looked around, wondering if she might see a puma hurrying away into the shadows or even have a sight of the wolves and foxes that she knew abounded.

Only the jaguar would be dangerous, the rest would slink out of sight at the first sound of a human being invading their solitude.

But if Skye looked around her, she also looked behind, not once but a thousand times. Supposing they had been followed, supposing El Diablo was already on their track! It was impossible for her to pretend even to herself that she was not afraid of being overtaken.

The path twisted and turned, sometimes a landslide or a new gully caused by the winter rains seemed to have obliterated the track so that Pedro hesitated and searched around before going on.

Sometimes too the path separated and they had to make a choice of taking one to the right or the left.