“Oh, no, Tony,” she said, smiling in the darkness as she took his hand and got out of the carriage. “We’ll consider it quite settled, please. Of course I mean for the trip only. Directly you are ready to go to Australia I’ll say good-bye--and no more nonsense.” And she squeezed against him as they passed through the fragrance of the hotel garden. “I’m too proud of you to be selfish. I’d never, never try to come between you and your real work.”
A railway journey of something under seven hundred miles, during each mile of which the train and everything in it became enveloped in a deeper and deeper mantle of dust, brought them to the town of Mendoza at the foot of the Andes. They stayed here for two nights and a day; then they went on again, climbing now, in the narrow-gauge railway, as far as it could take them. They slept the following night at a still comparatively decent inn, and next day mounted their mules and began to ride.
It was at this point that Miss Verinder, or Mrs. Fleming, or whatever one liked to call her, temporarily disappeared; her place being taken by a person in breeches, with boots big enough to contain a fur lining and at least three pairs of stockings--a person who might readily have been mistaken for a bright-eyed, eager, excited lad, until for a moment she took off her immense straw hat and disclosed an unexpected profusion of dark wavy hair.
Thus she rode out, bestriding her large mule jauntily, with Dyke on one side of her and the capataz or chief muleteer on the other side, the keen thin air fanning her, the fiery sun blazing at her--through such scenery as till now she had seen only in dreams, along the edge of precipices, past ravines through the hidden depths of which torrents went raging, beneath stupendous overhanging cliffs--she rode out into brain-reeling wonder and heart-folding enchantment.
“O pig, O laziest of swine,” said their capataz, smiling at her ingratiatingly, but addressing her mule. “Will you move when a lady rides you or will you not?” And, dropping back, he belaboured the hindquarters of Emmie’s mule with a substantial stick.
This highly praised muleteer--Manuel Balda by name--was ferocious enough of aspect; dressed in the usual gaucho style, with slouch hat, poncho, and knife at belt; rolling his sloe-like eyes and showing yellow teeth in a weather-stained face. But his manner had been quite magnificent when Dyke ceremoniously presented him to Emmie a few minutes ago, and since then he had taken off his hat and bowed to her at least five times. His voice, too, grew gentle and caressing whenever he addressed her directly. He spoke English well, and one understood at once that he was inordinately proud of his knowledge of the language. He called her Missis, not Señora or Donna. “Now he moves for Missis,” said Manuel, satisfied with her mule’s accelerated pace. “And I, Manuel Balda, myself would die for Missis”; and he doffed his hat and bowed. “That is comprehended, is it not? Don Antonio has said me to be the guard of Missis all time our journey shall last. Be it so, to the last drop of my blood.” Then, with the most graceful ceremony, he gave his cudgel to her, vowing that he had trimmed it for this express purpose, and begging her not to spare its use. Then with another profound bow he galloped ahead, and they saw him no more till the evening. He had gone on to overtake their train of pack-mules, which had been slowly plodding forward for the last three days.