Why I felt that impulse to devil him I do not know. Of course I do know. I was blind, unforgivingly jealous of what had happened to him. The fact that I took it as a matter of course did not alter that any. I certainly did hate him. I do not think I ever really hated him until he had that little spell of superiority at lunch⁠—that and when he went through all that barbering. So I put the telegram in my pocket. The telegram came to me, anyway.

“Well,” I said. “We ought to pull out on the noon bus for Burguete. They can follow us if they get in tomorrow night.”

There were only two trains up from San Sebastian, an early morning train and the one we had just met.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Cohn said.

“The sooner we get on the stream the better.”

“It’s all one to me when we start,” Bill said. “The sooner the better.”