"Famously; although I do not understand why I, who have set foot in Mexico today for the first time, should find it necessary to employ such mighty precautions."
The first horseman laughed sarcastically.
"Of course," the other exclaimed energetically, "even if it cost me my life."
"In that case do as you are recommended."
"Is that settled? you understand all about it?"
The second horseman then checked his steed to let the first one go on ahead, and both keeping a short distance apart, proceeded at a smart trot toward the statue of Charles IV., which, as we said, stands at the entrance of the Paseo.
While conversing, the two horsemen had forgotten the advanced hour of the night, and the solitude that surrounded them. At the moment when the first rider passed the equestrian statue, a slip knot fell on his shoulders, and he was roughly dragged from his saddle.
The second rider had seen all; quick as thought he whirled his lasso round his head, and galloping at full speed, hurled it after the Salteador at the moment when he passed twenty yards from him.
The Salteador was stopped dead, and hurled from his horse; the worthy robber had not suspected that another person beside himself could have a lasso so handy. The horseman, without checking his speed, cut the reata that was strangling his companion, and, turning back, dragged the robber after him.
The first horseman so providentially saved, freed himself from the slip knot that choked him, and, hardly recovered from the alarm he had experienced from his heavy fall, he whistled to his horse, which came up at once, remounted as well as he could, and rejoined his liberator, who had stopped a short distance off.
"Thanks," he said to him, "henceforth we are stanch friends; you have saved my life, and I shall remember it."
"Nonsense," the other answered, "I only did what you would have done in my place."
"That is possible, but I shall be grateful to you on the word of a Carnero," he exclaimed, forgetting in his joy the hint he had given a short time previously, not to make use of names, and revealing his own incognito; "is the pícaro dead?"
"Very nearly so, I fancy; what shall we do with him?"
"Make a corpse of him," the capataz said bluntly. "We are only two paces from the deadhouse, and he can be carried there without difficulty. Though he is an utter scoundrel and tried to assassinate me, the police are so well managed in our unhappy country that if we committed the imprudence of letting him live, we should have interminable disputes with the magistrates."
