“We should be heading further South by this time, surely?” Skye said once, her voice sharp with anxiety.

“Pedro knows the way and the señora need not worry,” he answered and rather than offend him she did not ask any more questions than were necessary.

He had a jolly disposition, there was no doubt about that. Most of the time he whistled through his teeth, occasionally bursting into song.

After several hours, when the path was particularly steep, Skye suggested that they walk to give their horses a rest and she noticed that Pedro, striding ahead, moved with a swagger, boldly revealing the breadth and depth of his chest and the lissomness of his narrow hips.

He was a vain fellow and Skye guessed that the hard life at the camp and the work that El Diablo insisted that all his men should do was not particularly to his liking.

When they stopped at the top of the ridge to let their horses breathe and to tighten their saddle girths before they mounted again, she said to him,

“It is brave of you to help me in this way. Are you planning to marry on the money I shall give you?”

“Marry? No, señora!” He laughed heartily. “I was married many years ago when I was only a boy, but I left my wife. She very jealous, always finding fault, always asking for money. One day I could stand no more and I left her. We lived in Seña, a town in the South. I came North to find work in Jācara.”

“And you found it?”

“Si, si, there is always work for Pedro and there are always pretty women who are kind to him, so I am happy! But if I stay anywhere too long I get bored, so I join El Cabeza and now, again, I go. Why not? The world a big place.”

“And where will you go after this?” Skye enquired, more to be pleasant than because she was interested.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Rio. Buenos Aires. Montevideo – ? Perhaps the señora take me with her to New York?”

“I think you would make a mistake to leave South America,” Skye said hastily.

She did not want to be saddled with this man. Besides, already she was planning that, once she had paid him his money and sailed away from Jācara, she would obliterate the whole episode from her mind. She would go back to civilisation and forget!

No, that was not true, she told herself, she would never be able to forget, but no one, except her lawyers who must set her free, should know about it, no one else should ever learn of her shame and humiliation, no one, no one!

She looked back down the steep difficult track that they had just traversed.

They must get on – supposing they were being followed, supposing she was recaptured!