TAILPIECE                                              She hesitated.          The man smiled broadly and stood back with the door of the truck in his hand. He had his hat in the other hand and he used it to wave her in to take a seat beside the driver. She would be wedged, trapped between them. They were all smiles and that made her even more nervous.          Not for the first time Liz wondered if it was worth it. A 'Gringo' travelling alone was strange enough. A 'Gringo' woman, alone, asking for a lift in a truck into the mountains, was unheard of. She glanced up at the back of the truck. Wide horned cattle with ribs and angular shoulder joints filled the open back. Nowhere to stand there. She looked at the driver, dark skinned, mustacheos, wide smile with lots of irregular teeth. The cab smelled of body odour and engine oil. She smiled weakly at the driver and climbed in beside him.          If she turned back now the sense of having failed would haunt her for the rest of her life, and she knew no other way to get beyond Casserone. The old bus, with its slatted wooden seats and roof rack with cases, boxes and crates of chickens, stopped at Casserone. She had to go further. She had to convince herself that she had done everything possible.          The driver chain smoked, driving fast and lazily with one hand dangling out of the window. He chatted but her answers were monosyllabic. Several times during the bumpy, dusty drive the other man slid his hand on to her knee and she politely but firmly lifted it off again.          As she climbed out of the cab hands were extended to give her the help she didn't need, touching her waist and her bottom. She was exhausted, not just with the heat and jolting but with holding herself tense waiting for the next move by the man's hand. The men were harmless really. They had done nothing she couldn't handle and she supposed that in a way they had been kind, but she knew she would be a talking point in the bars for months to come. Stories would be told with lots of innuendo and elbow nudges and back slappings.          They handed her down her pack from the roof-rack on top of the cab and watched her walk towards the low clay-walled buildings.          *      *      *      *      *          ‘Senorita Leez!’ Hironimo was delighted and then suddenly serious when he saw the state she was in. They took her into the house and Theresa fetched a basin of water for her to wash. Augustina brought a jug of orange juice and glasses.          Later Hironimo took her out to the shed and showed her the Dodge. He explained how the men had ransacked it and slashed the tyres. He didn't say so but she got the impression that Hironimo had been beaten. He had a bruise on his face. But they hadn't found the money. He showed Liz where he had hidden it in one of the bee-hive shaped clay ovens, encased in hardened clay.          He knew where the horses were. Word had come to him from the rancher. He was dubious about taking Liz with him but she insisted and he recognised her mood of quiet desperation. Seeing the Dodge was good. It was the first positive indication she had had that her guesswork was on the right lines.                   *      *      *      *      *          To start with they followed Allan's route up the valley. People had seen the lone man, walking with one horse and one mule and Hironimo knew who to ask. They found the ranch where Allan had left the animals. The rancher wanted more money than Allan had given him and Hironimo paid him with some of the American dollars. Mollified, the rancher told them about the angry men. How they had asked him about the Gringo who had brought the horses. How they had gone on past his ranch, on up the valley and then returned quickly. The men had said the rancher had deceived them. The men had said the tracks stopped a mile or so further up the valley. The rancher had protested and had been struck. The men had gone back and searched the mountains to the north and east and called up helicopters to search beyond that. The rancher spat on the ground. He hadn't liked the men and wished them to Hell. He didn't like helicopters either. They disturbed his horses and made his mare abort. He should be compensated. He looked hopefully at the pocket where Hironimo had replaced the wad of dollars.          Hironimo gave the rancher a few more dollars. The man then pointed north-east. He had heard the helicopters go in that direction and he had heard gunfire. He offered them wine and Hironimo took some. They shook hands.          Liz could ride well. Hironimo was glad of that because they could make good progress. He could not afford to be away from his orange grove for long. At night they stayed close to the river. He made a shelter by bending the branches of bushes to form a dome which he covered with blankets. It was cold at night. He made a fire and cooked slivers of tough meat on a stick. The Gringo woman was strange. She was tired and afraid but she did not complain. She urged them on when he suggested a halt. They followed trails which wound round ridges, zig-zagging and sometimes crossing tracks where Allan, on foot, had gone straight as truth.          *      *      *      *      *          Hironimo raised his hand and they stopped. They were on the crest of a broad ridge between too deep valleys. Liz allowed her horse to amble up alongside Hironimo's before she reined it in. He pointed.          ‘El Toros.’          Liz could see the Plaza and the great horn rising above the encircling walls. She shaded her eyes and scanned the landscape which wobbled as though melting in the heat.          ‘Would he have come this way?’ she said in Spanish.          ‘No one goes to The Plaza del Toros.’          ‘Allan said he would.’          Hironimo said, ‘Then he would have had to pass over this ridge and this is the best place to cross it.’          ‘Even on foot?’          ‘It's on the direct line. We must go on down this trail to the right now, but Senor Fraser could have gone straight over that shoulder.’          ‘Can you see signs?’          Hironimo shook his head. He did not know how he was going to persuade the woman to turn back. She would not do so easily and certainly not before they reached the Plaza. But turn back they must, eventually. In the meantime her will, fuelled by a desperate hope, drove them onwards. He would wait until that hope was gone.          He said, ‘Shall we rest? Would you like to drink?’          She said, ‘There's no time.’          *      *      *      *      *          It was late afternoon on the third day when they entered the Plaza. The sun was behind the horn as they came through the narrow entrance. The rays shafting past the peak spread outwards in a fan. The sky beyond was pink. Hironimo stopped.          ‘We're here. What do you want to do?’          Liz rose in her stirrups to her full height, cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted.          ‘Allan!’          The sound, high pitched and plaintive, echoed weakly around the amphitheatre and died. They waited.          Silence.          ‘Can you see signs?’          ‘There are footprints here,’ said Hironimo. ‘Going in but not coming out.’ He pointed at the ground. They were large foot prints made by the chunky cleated rubber of climbing boots.          ‘Allan!’          Her throat was tighter, the sound higher pitched and the echos less resonant.          Silence.          Hironimo reached down and drew his rifle from its leather saddle-holster. He raise it to his shoulder and fired a single shot at the sky. The report shattered the ears, bounced around the crags and died slowly.          Silence.          Hironimo turned to Liz.          ‘What do you want to do now? Where do you want to look? We must find a place to stay for the night soon.’          ‘I don't know,’ said Liz. She was looking at the ground, dejected. ‘Can we follow these foot ...’          And at that moment they heard the pistol-shot.          *      *      *      *      *          They found him in among the boulders at the base of the cliff. He was lying in the dust with the pistol by his hand and surrounded by a stench of sweat and urine. There was a crevice under a boulder where he said he had sheltered from the sun. There was only a cupful left in his water-bottle. He had eaten the last of his food three days before. He had a bullet wound in his thigh which he had bound with a strip torn from his shirt.          They poured water into him. He said to Liz, ‘Thanks. I'm glad you didn't go to Argentina.’          Later she said, ‘I don't understand. After they shot you, why did they leave you here?’          ‘I wasn't here when they shot me. I was up there.’ He pointed towards the summit of El Toro. She blinked and looked at him. He didn't seem to be delirious.          ‘How did you get down?’          ‘Abseiled. One leg is enough.’          Trying to be macho. Trying not to make a big deal out of it. Trying not to say how abominably his leg hurt. The descent of the horn had taken all his strength and a bit more. He had had to pick up his supplies on the shoulder of the pinnacle. The two gallons of precious water had seemed an impossible weight. When he reached the base of the cliff all he could do was crawl under the boulder.          ‘Why didn't they land and follow you?’          ‘Well I guess they thought I was dead.’          He had chosen the red rope hoping that the colour would be difficult to see against the red rock, and he had placed himself at the very rim of the ravine so that the rope was hidden by the edge of rock. Placing the rope had taken a long time, fixing the peg, measuring the length, judging the elasticity, everything calculated carefully, but when it came to it, he had nearly flunked it.          He had visions of the rope getting tangled round his neck as he fell. He had no way of knowing what position his body would be in when he hit the tension at the end of the rope. Even with a harness hidden below his clothing the impact could break his ribs if he had the wrong posture. And there was a worry about the length of rope. Too long and he could strike the walls of the cleft as he fell. Too short and he wouldn't swing out of sight, and be left dangling there, an easy target. The choppers would manoeuvre round to see what had happened to him. He had to pendulum behind a big jammed chock-stone in the chimney and perch there out of sight.          He had planned a spectacular jerk backwards and then a fall, the way he had seen stunt men do it in cowboy films, but the first bullet went through the muscles of his left thigh and pulled the leg away from under him. So when he fell he wasn't acting. He hadn't known he was shot until later. He was falling into the darkness of the cleft with the noise of the choppers and the guns and the bullets ricocheting off the rocks around him.          *      *      *      *      *          They took a long winding route back. He sat on Hironimo's horse in front of the little man. He was still weak and fainted twice. Hironimo held him and lowered him slowly to the ground. Then they rested and forced more liquid between his lips.          ‘Where are we going?’          They were sitting in the shade of some bushes. Hironimo was by the river filling the water bottles, being careful to let the silt settle out and then decanting.          ‘To Hironimo's farm.’          Liz put a small water bottle into Allan's hand.          He took a swig. ‘I don't think that's a good idea,’ he said. ‘Someone might come.’          ‘Hironimo says it will be safe. He says he'll build us a shelter not far from his house.’          ‘I owe him a lot,’ said Allan.          Liz corrected him. ‘We owe him a lot.’          She was wearing faded jeans frayed at the end and a khaki shirt worn loosely outside her pants. It was stained with perspiration and she had on the floppy wide-brimmed hat he had given her.          He said, ‘Talking of us’ and looked up at her, squinting against the sun which had found gaps in the overhead foliage.          ‘What about us?’          Her hair was matted and straggling everywhere. She brushed it aside with her wrist.          ‘Are you still going to Argentina?’          ‘Depends.’          Her voice was tired. She sat down in the dust at his feet and hugged her knees.          ‘On what?’          ‘On whether you're going or not.’          ‘Oh! I see. You haven't written me off altogether then.’          She smiled. It was more of a smirk. ‘Not altogether. Having gone to all this trouble to get you I think I might just hang on to you for a bit longer.’          ‘Long enough to marry me?’          She looked over to where Hironimo was standing in the water, bent over the water cans he was pushing down under the surface. She nodded slowly. ‘I guess so. I might just give it a whirl.’ Then she looked round at him and smiled.          ‘Even if I am stony broke?’          ‘I can earn enough for both of us until you get fit and find your way.’ Hironimo was lifting the water-cans out of the stream. ‘What do you think you will be able to do?’          ‘Why do I have to do anything?’ His voice was weak. ‘Can I not just sit and watch you working?’          Her cheek dimpled. ‘You planning to be a gentleman of leisure? Living off my pittance?’          ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I thought we might both live off these.’ Painfully he put a hand in his pocket and extracted a bundle of paper. ‘Halpern knew how to look after himself and he won't be needing these now.’ He passed a bit of paper to her. She held it, frowning.          ‘What is it?’          ‘I think it's a Bill of Transfer to a bank in Lichtenstein. Halpern seems to have been salting money away for himself.’          ‘But you can't use this!’          ‘Why not? He can't - that's for certain.’          ‘But....’          ‘But it's illegal. Is that what you were going to say?’          ‘Yes.’          There was a long pause. One of the horses snorted.          ‘Well think about this. One.’ He held up a hand with one finger extended. ‘Being dead, Halpern has no use for it and he probably stole it anyway. Two. How can we give it back to whoever he stole it from without giving ourselves away and getting ourselves killed in the process? Three.’ The hand was getting tired. He let it fall. ‘If we don't give it back and it just lies there some banker will get the benefit of it and he will not deserve it as much as we do. After all we've just saved the world from a fate worse than death - being ruled permanently by businessmen and computer experts. Four.’ The hand lifted briefly and then dropped back into the dust. ‘If we do take the money we can afford to pay Hironimo back for his kindness. We could give him a tidy sum and have plenty left over for ourselves.’          Her face broke slowly into a smile. She looked at him sideways through narrow conspiratorial eyes. ‘I see you've been giving some thought to this. How much money are we talking about?’          He smiled mischievously. ‘Give or take a bit ... without being too precise about it .... rounding up or down ... to the nearest whole figure ... I would say ... perhaps ... it would not be stretching veracity ... too far ...’          ‘Stop that!’ she said. ‘How much?’          ‘Three million dollars.’          She looked at him with her mouth open. ‘You're joking!’          ‘No joke. Honest. So if you were willing to marry me when you thought I was broke are you still willing to marry me if I'm rich?’          ‘I guess I could put up with that,’ she said. ‘What's the catch?’          ‘Well. You're quite right of course. There is a catch. The money is all in the name of the false identity Halpern set up. He fixed himself up with a false Canadian passport.’          Allan dug slowly into another pocket, grimacing as he moved his leg. ‘Here it is.’ He opened it up and looked at it with eyes half shut and his head on one side.          ‘Actually .... the picture is more like me than Halpern. The height is close enough and if I grew a beard .... ’ He tilted his head to the other side. ‘Aye. This guy could pass as me. And Canadian. That's ok. I like the Canadians. Just think. It could have been an Englishman.’          ‘Stop that!’ she said. ‘I won't have this childish xenophobia.’ But she was laughing.          ‘Ok. Ok. But there is a snag. A very big snag.’ He held up the passport to show her. ‘D'you think you could bear to be married to someone who was called `Mark Thatcher'?’          She pushed her hat back on her head and folded her arms. Her lower lip pouted. ‘Well now,’ she said. ‘I'll have to think about that one.’