But there was no time
to lose. They had already lost two hours from the consequences of their
cold bath. Cuzco was still eighteen miles distant; and the Alcalde's
shrewdness would at once divine this to be his wife's mark. They
remounted: very soon the silent night echoed the hoofs of a pursuing
rider; and now commenced the most frantic race, in which each party
rode as if the whole game of life were staked upon the issue. The pace
was killing: and Kate has delivered it as her opinion, in the memoirs
which she wrote, that the Alcalde was the better mounted. This may be
doubted. And certainly Kate had ridden too many years in the Spanish
cavalry to have any fear of his worship's horsemanship; but it was a
prodigious disadvantage that _her_ horse had to carry double;
while the horse ridden by her opponent was one of those belonging to
the murdered Don Antonio, and known to Kate as a powerful animal. At
length they had come within three miles at Cuzco. The road after this
descended the whole way to the city, and in some places rapidly, so as
to require a cool rider. Suddenly a deep trench appeared traversing the
whole extent of a broad heath. It was useless to evade it. To have
hesitated was to be lost. Kate saw the necessity of clearing it, but
doubted much whether her poor exhausted horse, after twenty-one miles
of work so severe, had strength for the effort.
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