“I can’t give you what there isn’t to give,” said the manager.
“Good!” they said, and pulled out the hideous machetes, the heavy knives of the Mexicans.
José, intimidated, produced the suit-case with the thousand pesos. The money was wrapped up in the corner of a blanket.
“Now, come with us,” said the bandits.
“Where to?” asked the manager, beginning at last to be scared.
“Only out on to the hill, where we will leave you, so that you cannot telephone to Ixtlahuacan before we have time to get away,” said the Indians.
Outside, in the bright moon, the air was chill. The American shivered, in his trousers and shirt and a pair of bedroom slippers.
“Let me take a coat,” he said.
“Take a blanket,” said the tall Indian.
He took a blanket, and with two men holding his arms, he followed José, who was likewise held captive, out of the little gate, across the dust of the road, and up the steep little round hill on which the organ cactus thrust up their sinister clumps, like bunches of cruel fingers, in the moonlight. The hill was stony and steep, the going, slow. José, a fat young man of twenty-eight, protested in the feeble manner of the well-to-do Mexicans.
At last they came to the top of the hill. Three men took José apart, leaving Bell alone near a cactus clump. The moon shone in a perfect Mexican heaven. Below, the big lake glimmered faintly, stretching its length towards the west. The air was so clear, the mountains across,