"THERE," the half-caste said, with a sort of whinny of triumph, as though he had lain innocently all these seven hours under the suspicion of lying. He pointed across the barranca to a group of Indian huts on a peninsula of rock jutting out across [174] the chasm. They were perhaps two hundred yards away, but it would take another hour at least to reach them, winding down a thousand feet and up another thousand.
   The priest sat on his mule watching intently: he could see no movement anywhere. Even the look-out, the little platform of twigs built on a mound above the huts, was empty. He said: "There doesn't seem to be anybody about." He was back in the atmosphere of desertion.
   "Well," the half-caste said, "you didn't expect anybody, did you? Except him. He's there. You'll soon find that." "Where are the Indians?"
   "There you go again," the man complained. "Suspicion. Always suspicion. How should I know where the Indians are? I told you he was quite alone, didn't I?"
   The priest dismounted. "What are you doing now?" the half-caste cried despairingly.
   "We shan't need the mules any more. They can be taken back."
   "Not need them? How are you going to get away from here?"
   "Oh," the priest said. "I won't have to think about that, will I?" He counted out forty pesos and said to the muleteer: "I hired you for Las Casas. Well, this is your good luck. Six days' pay."
   "You don't want me any more, father?"
   "No, I think you'd better get away from here quickly. Leave you-know-what behind."
   The half-caste said excitedly: "We can't walk all that way, father. Why, the man's dying."
   "We can go just as quickly on our own hoofs. Now, friend, be off." The mestizo watched the mules pick their way along the narrow stony path with a look of wistful greed: they disappeared round a shoulder of rock—crack, crack, crack, the sound of their hoofs contracted into silence.
   "Now," the priest said briskly, "we won't delay any more," and he started down the path, with a small sack slung over his shoulder. He could hear the half-caste panting after him: his wind was bad: they had probably let him have far too much beer in the capital, and the priest thought, with an odd touch of contemptuous affection, of how much had happened to them both since that first encounter in a village of which he [175] didn't even know the name: the half-caste lying there in the  hot noonday rocking his hammock with one naked yellow toe. If he had been asleep at that moment, this wouldn't have happened. It was really shocking bad luck for the poor devil that he was to be burdened with a sin of such magnitude. The priest took a quick look back and saw the big toes protruding like slugs out of the dirty gym shoes: the man picked his way down, muttering all the time—his perpetual grievance didn't help his wind. Poor man, the priest thought, he isn't really bad enough. ...
   And he wasn't strong enough either for this journey. By the time the priest had reached the bottom of the barranca he was fifty yards behind. The priest sat down on a boulder and mopped his forehead, and the half-caste began to complain long before he was down to his level: "There isn't so much hurry as all that." It was almost as though the nearer he got to his treachery the greater the grievance against his victim became. "Didn't you say he was dying?" the priest asked.
   "Oh, yes, dying, of course. But that can take a long time."
   "The longer the better for all of us," the priest said, "Perhaps you are right. I'll take a rest here."
   But now, like a contrary child, the half-caste wanted to start again. He said: "You do nothing in moderation. Either you run or you sit."
   "Can I do nothing right?" the priest teased him, and then he put in sharply and shrewdly: "They will let me see him, I suppose?"
   "Of course," the half-caste said and immediately caught himself up. "They, they. Who are you talking about now? First you complain that the place is empty, and then you talk of they." He said with tears in his voice: "You may be a good man. You may be a saint for all I know, but why won't you talk plainly, so that a man can understand you? It's enough to make a man a bad Catholic."
   The priest said: "You see this sack here. We don't want to carry that any farther. It's heavy. I think a little drink will do both good. We both need courage, don't we?"
   "Drink, father?" the half-caste said with excitement, and watched the priest unpack a bottle. He never took his eyes away while the priest drank. His two fangs stuck greedily out, [176] quivering slightly on the lower lip. Then he too fastened on the mouth. "It's illegal, I suppose," the priest said with a giggle, "on this side of the border—if we are this side." He had another draw himself and handed it back: it was soon exhausted—he took the bottle and threw it at a rock and it exploded like shrapnel. The half-caste started. He said: "Be careful. People might think you'd got a gun."
   "As for the rest," the priest said, "we wont need that."
   "You mean there's more of it?"
   "Two more bottles—but we can't drink any more in this heat. We'd better leave it here."
   "Why didn't you say it was heavy, father? I'll carry it for you. You've only to ask me to do a thing. I'm willing. Only you just won't ask."
   They set off again, up-hill, the bottles clinking gently: the sun shone vertically down on the pair of them. It took them the best part of an hour to reach the top of the barranca. Then the watch tower gaped over their path like an upper jaw and the tops of the huts appeared over the rocks above them. Indians do not build their settlements on a mule path: they prefer to stand aside and see who comes. The priest wondered how soon the police would appear: they were keeping very carefully hidden.
   "This way, father." The half-caste took the lead, scrambling away from the path up the rocks to the little plateau. He looked anxious, almost as if he had expected something to happen before this. There were about a dozen huts: they stood quiet, like tombs against the heavy sky. A storm was coming up.
   The priest felt a nervous impatience: he had walked into this trap, the least they could do was to close it quickly, finish everything off. He wondered whether they would suddenly shoot him down from one of the huts. He had come to the very edge of time: soon there would be no tomorrow and no yesterday, just existence going on for ever; he began to wish he had taken a little more brandy. His voice broke uncertainly when he said: "Well, we are here. Where is this Yankee?"
   "Oh, yes, the Yankee," the half-caste said, jumping a little. It was as if for a moment he had forgotten the pretext. He stood there, gaping at the huts, wondering too. He said: "He was over there when I left him."
   [177] "Well, he couldn't have moved, could he?"
   If it hadn't been for that letter he would have doubted the very existence of the American—and if he hadn't seen the dead child too, of course. He began to walk across the little silent clearing towards the hut: would they shoot him before he got to the entrance? It was like walking a plank bli............