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cattle gone, a rastreador would magically arrive at his door. “If there’s a chance of getting your schooner back, these are the men who’ll do it.”
    Meantime, he was studying the rastreadores’ spokesman very thoughtfully. Walking up to him, he asked permission, and then inspected his steed. It was a good horse, with one white forefoot and one white hindfoot, which according to gaucho lore guaranteed it to be fast. As further testament to its quality, it bore several marks on its flanks, evidence that it had been bought and sold several times. When a man acquired a new mount, he put his personal brand on it, and then when he sold it he repeated the brand, doubling it to show that the horse was no longer his property.
    Wiki tapped a double brand made up of four stars in the shape of the Southern Cross, and said, “I knew the man who owned this mark.”
    â€œMy brother,” said the rider.
    â€œYour brother?” Wiki echoed, astonished, and said, “May I ask your name?”
    â€œBernantio,” said the other. “Manuel.”
    Wiki lifted his brows, amazed at the coincidence, though he knew from personal experience how wide and far the gauchos wandered—and how many brothers they had, some by birth, others adopted. “I believe your brother is Juán,” he said after identifying himself. “A year ago, I rode with him.”
    â€œHe spoke of you,” said Bernantio without a trace of surprise. Then he added, “He also said that your comrade was a tall man with yellow hair whose face resembled that of a sheep.”
    Wiki ducked his head, partly to hide his grin at this apt description of George Rochester, and partly to show his respect for the gossip of the pampas, which apparently was as accurate as shipboard scuttlebutt.
    â€œHe is well?” the gaucho inquired. Wiki, who had almost forgotten the elaborate courtesies of the region, assured him of George’s health, and asked equally politely about the welfare of Bernantio’s brother Juán. That ritual over, Bernantio remarked, “I was reliably informed that you had long hair like our own. Something has happened?”
    Typically, these gauchos had hair that fell past their shoulders, and were inordinately proud of the black tresses that flew in the wind as they galloped. Wiki’s own hair had indeed been as long as theirs, but was now reduced to six-inch ringlets springing ferociously about his face.
    â€œIt was cut,” he admitted.
    â€œMay I ask the reason?”
    â€œFor a woman. As a sentimental gift for her to remember me by.”
    Bernantio nodded judiciously. “Without doubt she had an elegant ankle.”
    â€œA most elegant ankle,” Wiki reminiscently agreed, then returned to business. “You can help us find the schooner that Captain Stackpole has lost?”
    â€œPerhaps if you accompanied me to the back of the store, it would assist.”
    Bernantio slid down from his horse, handed the rein to a companion, and then led the way around the corner with a great clattering of dragging spurs. He opened a big double gate in a wooden fence, revealing a spacious yard at the back of Adams’s store. There was a privy in one corner, a dusty bougainvillea growing in another, a pile of empty sacks where a cat was raising a family of kittens, and a large, broken-down cart. A ramp led up to a wide set of two doors, confirming that this was the way goods were received and discharged. Alongside it was a single, narrow door, and though it didn’t have a notice Wiki judged it led to the disused surgery.
    He looked back at Bernantio, and waited. The gaucho blew a stream of tobacco smoke out of the side of his mouth, took out his thin, misshapen cigar, and used it to gesture about the trampled dried mud of the yard. “There were horses here,” he said. “Many horses. They were loaded, and then driven away. Another rider followed later.”
    So this