She let her eyes lift momentarily from the spoon, but he had kept his face carefully blank. He was beginning to notice her enunciation now. The accent was discernible sometimes. Her careful precision seemed an effort to hide it.
“This derrotero,” she said. “Literally a map, a chart. It was made by the captain of the mule train. When he realized the Texans would inevitably catch him, he secreted the pay chests somewhere in the brush, making the chart. Fearing that, if he entrusted the whole of the chart to one man, that man might be captured, he divided it into three portions. Thus, if one or even two of the men were caught, the chests would still be safe, for the hiding place could not be located without all three portions. One section he sent with an Indian to Santa Anna himself at San J
