Chapter 1
1949

“I hate men!”

“Nonsense!”

“It’s true. They’re all the same, wanting to get their hands on me or on my money.”

Jimmy Donaldson threw back his head and laughed so much that his horse pranced uneasily from side to side, startled by such exuberance.

“A cynic at twenty-one!” he gasped at last.

“If telling the truth and using a little common sense means that I am a cynic, then I am content to be one,” came the reply, as Skye, with a flick of her riding whip, rode on ahead.

Too late Jimmy realised that he had offended his young cousin. But she was so exquisitely lovely with her tiny tip-tilted nose in an oval face and fair hair that curled riotously over her small head that the mere idea of her being created for anything but the delight of mankind seemed ridiculous.

Yet Jimmy knew Skye well enough to be aware that she was not joking when she said that she hated his sex.

So, curbing his laughter, he rode after her.

He caught her up just as they reached the top of the rising ground, from which they had a breathtaking view of one of the great fertile valleys which made Mariposa one of the most beautiful countries that Jimmy had ever visited in his long life as a Diplomat.

Rugged rocks rising in the distance to the height of small mountains were rusty red in colour against the vivid blue of the sky, while below lay a lush semi-tropical vegetation with flowers starring the ground in vivid profusion and butterflies of every shape and colour hovering above them.

It was awe-inspiring in its loveliness and, as he reached Skye’s side, he heard her draw in a deep breath and her voice was lilting with joy as she exclaimed,

“Isn’t it wonderful? Just how I knew it would be.”

She had evidently forgotten her indignation and, watching her parted lips and shining eyes, Jimmy wondered, as he had wondered so often before, why she always had the facility to surprise him, not once but a dozen times every day they were together.

“It’s a magnificent country, isn’t it, Jimmy?” she insisted as he said nothing.

“Magnificent,” he agreed drily, “but so are its neighbours, Uruguay to our left and South Brazil to our right. And, as I have told you before, they are far more savoury spots than this to go sightseeing in.”

“You are an old woman! That’s what is the matter with you,” Skye retorted scornfully.

“Such a remark would undoubtedly incense me to madness if I was twenty-five,” Jimmy remarked philosophically, “but at fifty-five I can afford to ignore it. I grant you that Mariposa is very pretty but, having said that, let me ask you once again to come to Chile with me and look at the scenery there.”

“Oh, be quiet, Jimmy! You know my answer. You have bored me enough already with your objections to my plans and nothing you can say will make me change my mind. I have been wanting to come to Mariposa for years and, now I am here, not even an army of croaking cousins would stop me exploring the country.”

“My dear child, you simply don’t know what trouble you may be walking into,” Jimmy protested, “besides, there is nothing to see that you have not seen already.”

“But I haven’t seen anything,” Skye cried. “You don’t think I am going to be satisfied with just looking at American cars rushing up and down the streets of Jācara, do you?”

“But in Heaven’s name, what else is there to see?” Jimmy enquired. “Jācara is the only decent town in the country, if you can call it a town, and the rest of Mariposa is very much what you see here, flowers, butterflies and rocks.”

“I don’t know what Grandmamma would have said to you,” Skye smiled. “She used to tell me stories about Mariposa and they were the most thrilling exciting tales I have ever heard.”

“Things have changed since your grandmother was here,” Jimmy answered.

“But for the better,” Skye flashed at him. “After all she and my grandfather were frightened of being killed by Indians. A poisoned arrow in the back was what they expected in those days.”

“The result isn’t much different from a gun bullet in the front.”

“How you do go on! Just because there was a revolution here a year ago.”

“There is always a revolution of some sort taking place in Mariposa,” Jimmy explained patiently. “That is why the country is so backward and from what I hear its present Dictator has a very precarious hold on public opinion.”

“So the shooting is due to start at any moment,” Skye mocked. “But why shoot me? I am bringing money into the country. You saw what a reception we had when we brought the yacht into the harbour. Nice fat American dollars, Jimmy! Nobody’s going to be so foolish as to bump off the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

“If I could stay here with you, I should feel differently about it,” Jimmy said, “but you know I have to leave for Valparaiso tomorrow.”

“I know and, although I shall be sorry to lose you, I am really rather looking forward to seeing the country on my own. Does that sound very selfish and ungrateful?”

Skye looked at him from under her long eyelashes to see if he was annoyed and then she laughed and held out her left hand in its leather riding glove.

“Dear Jimmy, you have been so kind and so patient, but you know I intend to have my own way in this, so really it’s a waste of time arguing with me.”

“I am afraid you always get your way in everything,” Jimmy complained.

“Not really,” Skye replied. “I have had to wait until I was twenty-one, for instance, to come to Mariposa. I suggested coming years ago, but my aunt was simply horrified at the idea. She thinks everyone who lives in South America, or in the North for that matter, is a savage.”

“Hilda is a sensible woman,” Jimmy said, “I am extremely fond of her.”

“So am I,” Skye agreed, “but you must admit that she has very little imagination. So different from my American grandmother. You would have loved her!”

“I wonder. I am very English you know in some ways, one being that I disapprove of young ladies who, with too much money and not enough sense, go careering about the world by themselves.”

“There speaks all my English relations, ancestors and forbears,” Skye laughed. “When you talk like that, Jimmy, I find myself being extremely glad that I am half American.”

“All the same you will be sorry one day that you have not listened to me.”

It was not surprising that he was worried, he told himself as he watched her. She was, in her pink, white and gold beauty, enough to turn any man’s head and he had seen the bold glances her slim sweetly curved figure just blossoming into maturity received from the dark-eyed Mariposans with Spanish blood coursing hotly in their veins.

The horses were moving forward down the incline of the hill. As they went, Jimmy looked back and saw over his shoulder that their escorts, two Mariposan boys who had been sent with them as guides, were talking together and pointing to the distance.

Then, as he turned away, he heard one of them come cantering up behind.

“What is it?” he enquired in Spanish.

“Excusa, señor,” the boy said in his soft deep voice, “but it is best that you and the señorita should go no further.”

“Why?” Jimmy started to ask, only to be interrupted by Skye.

“We are going on,” she said in fluent and beautifully enunciated Spanish. “It is still early in the afternoon and the señor and I wish to see the country.”

“But, señorita – ” the boy started to say.

“That is what I command,” Skye said imperiously and, spurring her horse, she galloped off ahead.

It was a little time before Jimmy could catch her and when he did they cantered for some way over the soft springing turf before their horses settled down to walk more quietly beneath the shade of some trees.

“Why did he want us to turn back?” Jimmy asked when he could get his breath.

Skye shrugged her shoulders.

“Maybe he wants his siesta, who knows? Or perhaps he feels that we have had our money’s worth out of the horses, but, as I explained when I hired them, I need horses that can carry me all day if need be and mine is certainly not tired as yet.”

She bent forward to pat the glossy neck of the beautiful animal she was riding and then she looked at her cousin’s face and guessed his thoughts before he spoke them aloud.

“You are sensing danger, Jimmy, and you are wondering what arguments you can use to persuade me to turn back. You need not speak the words I see trembling on your lips. I know exactly what you will say and it’s quite useless.”

“In that case I suppose we go on.”

There was a slight irritation in Jimmy Donaldson’s voice.

He had been a Diplomat all his life, but sometimes he found his young cousin’s flouting of the conventions and her utter disregard for danger extremely irritating.

He was very fond of Skye. He had known her since she was born, for her father had been his first cousin and they had more or less been brought up together.

But whereas Arthur Standish had been an easy, good-natured, uncomplicated character, his daughter was very different.

“Yes, it’s my American blood,” Skye said aloud, again sensing what Jimmy was thinking, and added, “I wish you had known my mother – well, I mean.”

“She was a very lovely person to look at.”

“She was lovely in herself, too. So gay, so brave and exciting to be with. Oh, Jimmy, if only she had not died when I was too young to appreciate her!”

“It was a tragedy,” Jimmy agreed, “and yet the accident might never have happened if she had been a little more careful.”

“I could never imagine my mother being particularly careful about anything, but I had so little time with her, especially as I was only allowed to be with her in America for a part of my holidays.”

Her eyes darkened for a moment and Jimmy Donaldson thought, as he had thought before, how miserable it could be for the children of divorced parents with their divided loyalties and their feeling of instability without a proper home and a proper background.

“I suppose in a way everything connected with my mother seems to be brighter and more glorious simply because I saw so little of her,” Skye said honestly. “My upbringing in England certainly always seemed very tame compared with the excitements I could find at my grandfather’s house in Long Island or on his ranch in California. And you must remember those visits were very rare after my mother died, but now, as I look back at them, they are indivisibly mixed in my mind with my grandmother’s stories of Mariposa.”

“Did she come out here when she was a girl?” Jimmy asked.

“No, no – when she was first married. My grandfather was a mining engineer and they came out to try to discover gold for some firm in New York. It was not very successful, but they had wildly exciting adventures with the Indians on their trek into the interior.

“My grandmother had never left home before she married and what was more she had always lived in a town. The butterflies, birds and flowers here made her feel as if she was walking into a Fairyland. She used to describe them to me so vividly that now I feel as if I have seen all this before in some previous existence.”

“How long were your grandparents here?” Jimmy enquired.

“Only two or three years. Then they went back to America and, as you know, grandfather discovered oil. I cannot feel very excited about that part of their lives. Oil is so dirty and ruins the look of the land. But gold is different. There are even diamonds and rubies hidden away in those mountains. That’s romantic, if you like.”

“There may be unexplored mineral wealth that we still know nothing about in all these South American countries,” Jimmy said, “but the Spaniards, when they first came, were full of grandiose dreams of treasure trove, only to be disappointed.”

“As you are quite sure I shall be! It’s no use, Jimmy. I don’t want gold, Heaven knows I have enough of that, but I would like to have adventures like my grandmother had.”

“Adventures are usually only fun when one talks about them afterwards,” Jimmy pointed out.

“Dear, dear, how prosaic you are!” Skye mocked at him. “Well, I’ll have my adventures first and write about them afterwards and if it’s a best-seller, you will be proud to know me.”

“I would much rather you would read about adventures and listen to other people’s stories than try to live them yourself,” Jimmy said.

He looked over his shoulder as he spoke and added,

“By the way what has happened to our guides? They don’t seem very pleased about something.”

They’re just lazy,” Skye said quickly, too quickly, so that Jimmy looked at her speculatively and said,

“You know what is wrong! Now tell me, because otherwise I shall go back and question them.”

“No, Jimmy, don’t do that,” she pleaded. “There is nothing the matter, really, I promise you.”

“Tell me,” he said, “I insist on knowing.”

“All right, then,” she capitulated, “the man from whom we hired the horses did murmur something about not going too far into the interior. He said there were bandits or I don’t quite know what he did say. I didn’t catch the words properly. Anyway he implied that it was wiser to stay near Jācara.”

“Exactly what I said to you,” Jimmy said, “and now we will go back.”

“You can go back. I am not stopping you, but I have no intention of doing anything of the sort. Who wants to sit in Jācara when there is all of Mariposa to explore?”

“I told you, there is always trouble of some sort going on in this country and you don’t want to be mixed up in it.”

“How do you know I don’t? I like the Mariposans, what I have seen of them and if I get the chance, I shall give them some good advice and that is to get rid of their present Dictator.”

“General Alejo? He won’t last long. They never do! But I don’t expect he is any worse or any better than those who have held the position before him.”

“What they want in this country,” Skye said seriously, “is someone with initiative and courage, someone who will do something for all those poor people we saw hanging round the harbour.”

“What are you asking for. A Government of the people by the people for the people?” Jimmy teased.

Skye shook her head.

“No, I don’t believe, from what I have seen of them, that they are capable of governing themselves yet, but I don’t think that Alejo is of the slightest use to them. I saw him drive along the harbour road in his car yesterday. I am sure that it was because he was curious about the yacht, but he looked arrogant, fat and oily and I saw a lot of those beggars spit after he had gone by. They obviously have no love for him.”

“Dictators don’t expect to be loved, my dear, they only wish to be obeyed.”

“Well, I hope there are quite a lot of people who are prepared to disobey him. Look! What a perfect place to ride.”

She urged her horse forward as she spoke and Jimmy followed her.

The trees were left behind and now they had come into the open country. There was thick grass, a small winding river and the golden sunshine flooding everything with a hazy beauty.

It was good cattle country, Jimmy thought, and wondered why the Mariposans did not make better use of their land. Skye was leading the way in a wild gallop. On they went, the sweet fragrance of the grass seeming at times almost overpowering as they moved through it.

Then, ahead, Jimmy saw Skye rein in her horse.

She was looking at something and, as he came up to her, he saw that she had stopped beside a dead tree. It must have been struck by lightning for the shattered trunk was scarred and burnt, but it stood there, a bitter contrast to the lush live loveliness of everything else around it.

As he drew nearer, Jimmy saw that there was something else to look at besides the tree. He had a quick impression of horror in Skye’s wide eyes before he heard her voice, quick and urgent, ask,

“Jimmy, is he dead?”

He saw then that hanging from a bough of the tree was a dead man. He was swinging a few feet above the ground, a rope round his neck, his face distorted by the agony in which he had died.

There was no need for Jimmy to touch the cold hands, tied together behind his back or to feel the stillness of his heart to know that the man was dead. He had been hanged, perhaps two or three hours earlier and extremely effectively without there being the slightest chance of his being able to escape strangulation.

“Yes, he’s dead, Skye – and now come away.”

“But – but ought we not do something?”

Skye turned to her cousin in a perplexity that made him realise that she was in many ways very young and very inexperienced.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he replied.

“But surely we should report his death – to someone?” she asked. “Who can have dared to do such a thing?”

The colour was coming back into her cheeks and once again there was a ring in her voice.

“It is nothing to do with us,” Jimmy said quietly. “We are strangers, visitors, to this country. It’s always best to remember that our ideas of justice may not be other people’s.”

“Justice!” Skye cried. “Do you imagine that they gave him a trial of any sort? And now he will hang here until – ”

She glanced up at the sky.

Jimmy followed her gaze. As he expected there were two vultures hovering above them, waiting until they should move away.

“It’s horrible! It’s bestial!” Skye exclaimed.

She wheeled her horse round slowly. With an obvious reluctance the guides were following them and Skye rode a few paces towards them.

“Who has done this?” she asked as soon as she was within earshot. “Who is responsible for such an outrage?”

She pointed to the corpse as she spoke. The two boys looked for a moment and then glanced at each other. One crossed himself surreptitiously, but the other looked round quickly, as if in search of an enemy.

“Who could have done such a thing?” Skye repeated.

The boys looked at each other again and, hardly above a whisper one said, almost as if he spoke to himself,

“El beso del Diablo.”

“The kiss of the Devil,” Skye translated. “What does that mean?”

“I shouldn’t ask too many questions,” Jimmy said warningly in a low voice.

“But I want to know,” Skye retorted. “Surely things like this cannot happen, even in Mariposa, without some explanation?”

“We know nothing, señorita,” the older boy said with an air of defiance. “We should go back. It is not permitted to go any further.”

“Not permitted by whom?” Skye asked.

“I don’t know. But it is not permitted.”

His face had assumed the obstinate look that Jimmy recognised as being an almost universal mask when natives of any country wished to avoid giving explanations. He knew only too well the toneless voice, the furtive movements of the eyes and the air of stupidity not to realise that further questioning would get them no further.

“El beso del Diablo!” the younger boy whispered again, only to be shouted into silence by his companion.

For a moment it looked as if a quarrel would flare up between them. The younger answered the older and in a moment they were shouting and snarling at each other like two angry puppies. And then, as quickly as the storm blew up, it vanished again.

One moment the air was noisy and resonant with their raised voices and the next minute they were suddenly silent, their eyes staring ahead and then they had turned their horses and were galloping away as hard as they could go back the way they had come.

For a moment both Skye and Jimmy were too astonished to say or do anything and then, simultaneously, they turned their heads to see what had caused the flight of their guides.

Coming towards them through the flowered grass were several men on horseback.

“Who are they?” Skye asked.

“I have no idea,” Jimmy replied quietly, “but I think it best not to retreat. Let’s ride towards them, smile and appear friendly. On no account ask them any questions.”

He moved his horse forward as he spoke and Skye, drawing a little nearer to his side, went with him. There was nothing at first glance to warrant the terror that the approaching group had inspired in their guides.

Riding spirited horses the men appeared to be ordinary gauchos or cowboys of the South Americas. Their clothes were the usual hotchpotch of ancient and modern, wide sombreros, the loose trousers called bombachas tucked into boots of horsehide and factory-made tweed jackets. Only at festival time does the gaucho nowadays appear romantic.

Then, as the party came closer, both Skye and Jimmy saw that one man was different from the rest. He was riding in the centre of the group, and it was obvious without words or actions that he was the leader.

One glance at his handsome hawk-like features and broad shoulders was enough to confirm that they were in the presence of some striking personality.

He had a red scarf wound negligently round his neck, well-cut European tweeds and the light polished boots of a man whose life is spent in the saddle.

In his hand he carried a rebenque, the inevitable riding whip glistening with silver ornamentation and his saddle and stirrups were also encrusted with silver.

Whoever these men might be, here was their leader.

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