Leslie Charteris - Saint Errant

Then she looked at him, quickly and clearly, as if she had made up her mind about something.

“The last time I heard of my husband, he was at the Fonda de la Quinta,” she said. “That was two years ago. He wrote to me that he was going into the mountains. He liked to do things like that, to climb mountains and sleep under the stars and be a man alone, sometimes — it is curious, for he was very much a city man... I never heard of him again. He said he was going to climb the Gran Seño. I remembered, when I heard the name, that I had read of El Rojo in the newspapers about that time. And it seemed to me, when I heard you speak of El Rojo, that perhaps El Rojo was the answer.”

“If it was El Rojo,” said the Saint quietly, “I don’t think it would help you to find him now.”

Her eyes were still an enigma.

“Even so,” she said, “it would be something to know.”

“But you’ve waited two years—”

“Yes,” she said softly. “I have waited two years.”

She had told him no more than that, and he had known that she did not wish to say any more, but it had been enough to send him off on that quixotic wild-goose chase.

He had been leading the way for two hours, but presently, where the trail broadened for a short distance, she brought her horse up beside his, and they rode knee to knee. “I wonder why you should do this for me,” she said.

He shrugged.

“Why did you ask me?”

“It was an impulse.” She moved her hands puzzledly. “I don’t know. I suppose you have the air of a man who is used to being asked impossible things. You look as if you would do them.”

“I do,” said the Saint modestly.

It was his own answer, too. She was a damsel in distress — and no damsel in distress had ever called on the Saint in vain. And she was beautiful, also, which was a very desirable asset to damsels in distress. And about her there was a mystery, which to Simon Templar was the trumpet call of adventure.

In the late afternoon, at one of the bends in the trail where it dipped to the level of the river, the Saint reined in his horse and dismounted at the water’s edge.

“Are we there?” she said.

“No. But we’re leaving the river.”

He scooped water up in his hands and drank, and splashed it over his face. It was numbingly cold, but it steamed off his arms in the hot dry air. She knelt down and drank beside him, and then sat back on her heels and looked up at the hills that hemmed them in.

A kind of shy happiness lighted her eyes, almost uncertainly, as if it had not been there for a long time and felt itself a stranger.

“I understand now,” she said. “I understand why Gaspar loved all this, in spite of what he was. If only he could have been content with it...”

“You were not happy?” said the Saint gently.

She looked at him.

“No, señor. I have not been happy for so long that I am afraid.”

She got up quickly and put her foot in the stirrup. He helped her to mount, and swung into his own saddle. They set off across the shallow stream; the horses picked their way delicately between the boulders.

On the far side, they climbed, following a trail so faint that she could not see it all, but the Saint rarely hesitated. Presently the trees were thicker, and over the skyline loomed the real summit of the hill they were climbing. The valley was swallowed up in darkness, and up there where the Saint turned his horse across the slope the brief subtropical twilight was fading.

Simon Templar lighted a cigarette as he rode, and he had barely taken the first puff of smoke into his lungs when a man stepped from behind a tree with a rifle leveled and broke the stillness of the evening with a curt, “ Manos arriba! ”

The Saint turned his head with a smile.

“You’ve got what you wanted,” he said to Teresa Alvarez. “May I present El Rojo?”

The introduction was almost superfluous, for the red mask from which El Rojo took his name, which covered his face from the brim of his sombrero down to his stubble-bearded chin, was sufficient identification. Watching the girl, Simon saw no sign of fear as the bandit came forward. Her face was pale, but she sat straight-backed on her horse and gazed at him with an unexpected eagerness in her eyes. Simon turned back to El Rojo.

“ Qué tál, amigo? ” he murmured genially.

The bandit stared at him unresponsively.

“ Baje usted ” he ordered gruffly. He glanced at the girl. “You too — get down.”

His eyes, after that glance, remained fixed on her, even after she was down from the saddle and standing by the horse’s head. The Saint wondered for the first time whether he might not have let his zest for adventure override his common sense when he deliberately led her into the stronghold of an outlawed and desperate man.

El Rojo turned back to him.

“The señorita,” he said, “will tie your hands behind you.”

He dragged a length of cord from his pocket and threw it across the space between them. The girl looked at it coldly.

“Go on,” said the Saint, “Do what the nice gentleman tells you. It’s part of the act.”

He could take care of such minor details when the time came, but for the present there was a mystery with which he was more preoccupied.

When the Saint’s hands had been tied, El Rojo pointed his rifle.

“The señorita will lead the way,” he said. “You will follow, and I shall direct you from behind. You would be wise not to try and run away.”

He watched them file past him, and from the sounds that followed, the Saint deduced that El Rojo had taken the horses by their bridles and was towing them after him as he brought up the rear.

As they moved roughly parallel with the valley, the slope on their right became steeper and steeper until it was simply a precipice, and the rocks on their left towered bleaker and higher, and they were walking along a narrow ledge with the shadow of one cliff over them and another cliff falling away from their feet into a void of darkness. The path wound snake-like around the fissures and buttresses into which the precipice was sculptured, and presently, rounding one of those natural breastworks, they found themselves at a place where the path widened suddenly to become a natural balcony about twenty feet long and twelve feet deep — and then stopped. A natural wall of rock screened it from sight of the valley or the hills on the other side.

El Rojo followed them into the niche, leading the two horses, which he tied up to an iron ring by the mouth of a cave that opened in the rock wall at the end.

There was a dull glow of embers close by the mouth of the cave. The bandit stirred them with his foot, and threw on a couple of mesquite logs.

“Perhaps you are hungry,” said El Rojo. “I have little to offer my guests, but you are welcome to what there is.”

“I should like a cigarette as much as anything,” said the Saint. “But I’m not a very good contortionist.” The bandit considered him.

“I could untie you, señor, if you gave me your word of honor not to attempt to escape. It is, I believe, usual in these circumstances.”

His speeches had an elaborate theatricalism which came oddly out of his rough and ragged clothing.

“I’ll give you my word for two hours,” said the Saint, after a moment’s thought. “It can be renewed if necessary.”

“Es bastante. Y usted, señorita?”

“Conforme.”

“Entonces, por dos horas.”

El Rojo laid down his rifle and untied the Saint’s hands, but Simon noticed that he picked up the gun again at once, and that he kept it always within easy reach. The Saint understood the symptom well enough not to be disturbed by it. He lighted a cigarette and stretched himself out comfortably beside the fire and beside Teresa Alvarez, while the night closed down like a purple blanket and El Rojo brought out the bread and cheese and sausage and coarse red wine which are the staple fare in the mountains.