Bandit Love

Without a word, Myra stepped out, to see by the headlights of the car

that she was apparently in a mountain gorge, and to see a group of

masked and armed men standing beside some mules. She turned to look at

her captor as she reached the front of the car, and found that Cojuelo

was wearing what looked like a monk's cowl which completely covered his

face, and which accounted for his muffled voice. She saw that he was

tall, but that was all.

Cojuelo snapped out some orders, and a soberly-dressed, elderly man,

wearing no mask and carrying in his arms a number of parcels, appeared

out of the darkness and got into the car, which turned and sped away.

"Bien!" exclaimed Cojuelo, as the motor disappeared. "Everything is

working according to plan. In the unlikely event of the car being

stopped, it is found to contain Garcilaso, Don Carlos's steward,

returning from doing some marketing in the city. And who would guess

that the fair señorita had been spirited away in one of Don Carlos's

own cars?"

"So some of Don Carlos's servants are in your pay?" exclaimed Myra.

"They are all in my pay, sweet lady, and every man knows it is as much

as his life is worth to betray me," Cojuelo answered, with a triumphant

laugh. "But we waste time, and must not take the risk, remote as it

is, of being seen. Let me assist you to mount."

He picked Myra up in his arms and swung her up without any apparent

effort on to the saddle of a mule which one of the men had led forward,

mounted another mule himself, and gave some rapid orders.

"Follow me and ride carefully, señorita, for there are some steep and

dangerous paths to negotiate," he called to Myra. "Mendoza will lead

your mule at the most perilous places. Avanzar!"

To anyone less accustomed to riding and to taking risks than Myra, that

night ride through the mountains of the Sierra Morena would have been a

blood-curdling and nerve-shattering experience. Often she had to guide

her mule along a rough path barely a couple of yards wide, with a sheer

drop of hundreds of feet on one side, a path where a stumble or a false

step on the part of the animal would have meant certain death.

Yet Myra was conscious of no sense of fear now, and the dangers only

made her pulse beat faster and stirred her blood. But it was no easy

task riding a mule along precipitous paths and keeping her seat while

slithering down slopes, clad as she was in only a filmy evening frock

and a fur coat, and she cried out in protest at last: "How much further, Señor Cojuelo? I cannot sit this ungainly brute

much longer in these clothes."