The two guards came clambering down the face of the rock. Concepçion glanced at his late companion writhing in the sharpness of death.
‘Here or at Ronda, to-day, or to-morrow, what matters it?’ muttered the quiet-eyed man at Conyngham’s side. The Englishman turned and looked at him.
Concepçion sullenly awaited the arrival of the guards. These men ever hunt in couples of a widely different age, for the law has found that an old head and a young arm form the strongest combination. The elder of the two had the face of an old grey wolf. He muttered some order to his companion, and went towards the mule. He cut away the outer covering of the burden suspended from the saddle, and nodded his head wisely. These were boxes of cartridges to carry one thousand each. The grey old man turned and looked at him who lay on the ground.
‘A la longa,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘In the long run, Antonio.’
The man gave a sickly grin and opened his mouth to speak, but his jaw dropped instead, and he passed across that frontier which is watched by no earthly sentinel.
‘This gentleman,’ said the quiet-eyed man, whose guide had thus paid for his little mistake in refusing to halt at the word of command, ‘is a stranger to me—an Englishman, I think.’
The old soldier looked from one to the other.
‘That may be,’ he said, ‘but he sleeps in Ronda prison to-night. To-morrow the Captain-General will see to it.’
‘I have a letter to the Captain-General,’ said Conyngham, who drew from his pocket a packet of papers. Among these was the pink scented envelope given to him by the man called Larralde at Algeciras. He had forgotten its existence, and put it back in his pocket with a smile. Having found that for which he sought, he gave it to the soldier, who read the address in silence and returned the letter.
‘You I know,’ he said, turning to the man at Conyngham’s side, who merely shrugged his shoulders. ‘And Concepçion Vara, we all know him.’
Concepçion had lighted a cigarette, and was murmuring a popular air with the indifferent patience and the wandering eye of perfect innocence. The old soldier turned and spoke in an undertone to his comrade, who went towards the dead man and quietly covered his face with the folds of his own faja or waistcloth. This he weighted at the corners with stones, carrying out this simple office to the dead with a suggestive indifference. To this day the Guardias Civiles have plenary power to shoot whomsoever they think fit—flight and resistance being equally fatal.