“Here is the right track,” he said. “It was easy to overlook, but Pedro does not often make mistakes. See, it is better, less stony. We can hurry and soon we be in Jācara.”

“I certainly hope so,” Skye retorted.

“I think you give Pedro just a little more than five hundred dollars. Yes?”

“We will talk about that when we get to Jācara,” Skye answered.

“Perhaps you will give him eight hundred and fifty dollars?”

“As I said, we will wait until we get there before we discuss that,” Skye said.

“I, Pedro, would prefer the señora to promise me now eight hundred and fifty dollars.”

There was something in his voice and a glint in his eyes that made Skye agree without further prevarication.

“Very well,” she said, “eight hundred and fifty dollars. But remember, you only get it when we arrive in Jācara.”

She was being blackmailed, but she did not care. She was obsessed with the one idea – to get free, to make certain of her escape.

She thought of El Diablo’s face when he came back to the camp and found how cleverly he had been outwitted by one of his own men. She wished she could be there to see his anger. She could imagine the questions he would fire at the guards, the rising fury in his eyes and the tightness of his lips.

Yes, he would be angry, very angry, but she would not be there to suffer from it.

A sudden burst of cursing from Pedro brought her thoughts back to the present. She was not yet free of El Diablo and here they had come to yet another dead end.

Pedro burst into a blasphemous tirade against the mountains, against the winter rain, the country, the climate, in fact against everything except himself.

“We must go back,” Skye said wearily.

She felt very tired. Her head was aching and so was her body. She was thirsty and she knew that, although she did not feel hungry, she was also in need of nourishment.

Pedro turned his horse.

“It is very hard to find the way to Jācara. When we get there, the señora pay Pedro one – no, two thousand dollars?”

Skye looked at him. Why had she not noticed before that his eyes were too close together? She must have been mad to trust herself to this incompetent braggart whose only achievement was to extort money from her.

“I refuse to promise you any more than what has already been agreed,” she said coldly.

“I think the señora change her mind,” he answered quietly.

And suddenly Skye was afraid.

She didn’t know why – he did nothing but look at her, but there was something in his expression or perhaps in the stillness of his hands, surprisingly small and covered with dark hairs, that made her feel cold with fear.