ot offer to go on we dared not move. At last, blowing the smoke of
my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said, 'Senor, it would be
perhaps better for you if I rode behind your party. You are not very far
from Sulaco now. Go you with God.' What would you? We went on. There
was no resisting him. He might have been Hernandez himself; though my
servant, who has been many times to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he
had recognized him very well for the Capataz of the Steamship Company's
Cargadores. Later, that same evening, I saw that very man at the corner
of the Plaza talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the stirrup
with her hand on the grey horse's mane."

"I assure you, Senor Hirsch," murmured Charles Gould, "that you ran no
risk on this occasion."

"That may be, senor, though I tremble yet. A most fierce man--to look
at. And what does it mean? A person employed by the Steamship Company
talking with salteadores--no less, senor; the other horsemen were
salteadores--in a lonely place, and behaving like a robber himself! A
cigar is nothing, but what was there to prevent him asking me for my
purse?"

"No, no, Senor Hirsch," Charles Gould murmured, letting his glance
stray away a little vacantly from the round face, with its hooked beak
upturned towards him in an almost childlike appeal. "If it was the
Capataz de Cargadores you met--and there is no doubt, is there?--you
were perfectly safe."

"Thank you. You are very good. A very fierce-looking man, Don Carlos. He
asked me for a cigar in a most familiar manner. What would have happened
if I had not had a cigar? I shudder yet. What business had he to be
talking with robbers in a lonely place?"

But Charles Gould, openly preoccupied now, gave not a sign, made no
sound. The impenetrability of the embodied Gould Concession had its
surface shades. To be dumb is merely a fatal affliction; but the King
of Sulaco had words enough to give him all the mysterious weight of a
taciturn force. His silences, backed by the power of speech, had as many
shades of significance as uttered words in the way of assent, of doubt,
of negation--even of simple comment. Some seemed to say plainly, "Think
it over"; others meant clearly, "Go ahead"; a simple, low "I see," with
an affirmative nod, at the end of a patient listening half-hour was
the equivalent of a verbal contract, which men had learned to trust
implicitly, since behind it all there was the great San Tome mine, the
head