Flame of Diablo

Flame of Diablo Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Flame of Diablo Read Online Free PDF
Author: Sara Craven
them
    seemed to regard a car as a symbol of
    their machismo and behave accordingly,
    Rachel possessed a driving licence, but
    she doubted her ability to compete, and
    now that she had seen the standard of the
    road up to Asuncion, she was glad she
    had not tried. She tried to imagine
    meeting one of these buses on one of
    those bends, and shuddered inwardly.
    The window she was sitting beside was
    covered in dust, but she couldn't really
    be sorry. At least she was being saved
    those stomach-turning glimpses of some
    of the valleys they had passed—a sheer
    rocky drop down to a wrinkled snake of
    a river. And snakes were another feature
    of the journey that she did not want to
    contemplate.
    This whole trip was madness. She knew
    that now. What the hell did she think she
    was doing charging up a mountainside in
    company with a religious maniac
    masquerading as a bus driver, several
    crates of chickens and a goat?
    She had seen the look of horrified
    disbelief come into the hotel clerk's eyes
    when she had asked him which was the
    nearest town to Diablo, and the most
    direct means of getting there. He had
    done his level best to dissuade her,
    protesting that such places were not for
    the senorita. Then he had tried to
    persuade her to hire a car, but had made
    the basic mistake of pointing out that at
    least then she would be under the
    protection of the driver. Something in the
    way he had said this had needled Rachel
    unbearably.
    She had said clearly and coldly, 'I can
    look after myself, thank you, senor.'
    It had been a briefly satisfying moment,
    but he still thought she was mad. She had
    seen it in his face as he turned away to
    deal with another guest. And now she
    tended to agree with him. She had never
    sat on a more uncomfortable seat, and
    she doubted whether the bus itself had
    any springs. If she survived the journey,
    it would probably be as a hopeless
    cripple, she decided, as the base of her
    spine took another hammering.
    It had been easier than she expected to
    persuade the Arviles family that she
    intended
    to
    return
    to
    England
    immediately, in pursuit of the errant
    Mark. Isabel had been disappointed that
    she would not even spend a couple of
    days with them, and Rachel regretted the
    necessity of deceiving the girl. But she
    wondered secretly if the Senor and the
    Senora might not have been quietly
    relieved at her departure, or could they
    genuinely have wanted yet another
    English visitor upsetting the smooth
    tenor of their life? Certainly she could
    not have faulted their hospitality.
    She had tied a coloured handkerchief
    over her shoulder-length honey-coloured
    hair, and donned an enormous pair of
    sunglasses, but even so she knew that her
    fair hair and skin were attracting more
    attention than she desired from the
    mainly mestizo and Indian passengers,
    and she guessed that few tourists must
    travel
    by
    this
    route—particularly
    blonde, female English tourists.
    She wondered if Mark had taken the
    same frankly death-defying route before
    her, and had tried to put a few halting
    questions to the driver before they had
    set off, but he had stared at her
    uncomprehendingly, so she had given it
    up as a bad job.
    The bus seemed to be descending again,
    and slowly as well. Peering down the
    bus, Rachel could detect a huddle of
    buildings ahead of them, and guessed
    they had reached Asuncion.
    At first it seemed to bear a depressing
    resemblance to other small settlements
    they had passed along the way, with
    groups of tumbledown shacks lining a
    small rutted highway, but with a
    triumphant blast of its horn the bus
    wound along the road, avoiding groups
    of children and animals apparently
    attracted from the shack doorways to
    watch its passing, and turned into a large
    square. Here some attempt at least had
    been made to paint and generally
    refurbish the buildings and there was a
    small market in progress. Presumably
    this was the final destination of the
    chickens and .the goat, Rachel
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