The beach stretched in a yellow bow on either hand, fringed with bush and palms, receding to where the ultimate jaws of the bay stood black and thin against the sunrise. Once upon it, they could be seen by whoever should look from the town, and there was peremptory occasion for haste. Scott had counted on forcing the journey into a little over an hour, but he was not prepared for the eccentricities of a pack adjusted on a donkey's back by an amateur. There is no art in the world more arbitrary than that of tying a package on a beast. It must be done just so, with just such a hitch and such an adjustment of the burden, or one's rope might as well be of sand. These refinements were outside Scott's knowledge, and he had not gone far before he saw his bags and bundles clear themselves and tumble apart. There was a halt while he picked them up and lashed them on the ass anew. Again and again it happened, till his patience was raw; and all the time the steady sun swarmed up the sky and day grew into full being. Incarnacion sat serenely in her place while these troubles occupied him, smoking her cigarette and looking about her. He was involved in an effort to jam the pack and the donkey securely in one overwhelming intricacy of knots when she called to him. "Jock," she said. "Yes, what's up?" he grunted, hauling remorselessly on a line with a knee against the ass's circumference. "A man," she said placidly. "He come along, too, behin' us." "Eh? Where?" he demanded, putting a last knot to the tedious structure. Incarnacion pointed to the bush. "I see him poke out hees head two times," she explained. Scott passed his hand behind him to his revolver, and stared with narrow eyes along the green frontier at the bush. He could see nothing. "A big man, 'Carnacion?" he asked. "Mustaches? Black hair?" She nodded and lit another cigarette. "You know him, Jock?" "I know him," he answered, and drove the donkeys on, thwacking the pack-ass cautiously for the sake of the load. It was an anxious passage then, on the open beach. The men who followed had the cover of the shrubs; theirs was the advantage to choose the moment of collision. They could shoot at him from their concealment and flick his brains out comfortably before he could set eyes on them; or they could shoot the donkeys down, or put a bullet into Incarnacion where she rode, quiet and regardless of all. He flogged the beasts on to a trot with a hail of blows, and ran up into the bush to take an observation.