"Yes, 'mi General," Jose exclaimed, eagerly, "I am here."

Longorio scrutinized the horse-breaker critically. "Your name is--?"

"Jose Sanchez."

"You look like a brave fellow."

Jose swelled at this praise, and no doubt would have made suitable answer, but his employer held out her hand, and General Longorio bent over it, raising it to his lips.

"Senora, one favor you can grant me. No! It is a right I shall claim."

He called one of his subordinates closer and ordered that a lieutenant and six soldiers be detached to act as an escort to Mrs. Austin's party. "It is nothing," he a.s.sured her. "It is the least I can do. Have no uneasiness, for these men are the bravest of my command, and they shall answer with their lives for your safety. As for that teniente--ah, he is favored above his general!" Longorio rolled his eyes. "Think of it! I could be faithless to duty--a traitor to my country--for the privilege he is to enjoy. It is the sacred truth!

Senora, the hours will drag until I may see you again and be of further service. Meanwhile I shall be tortured with radiant dreams. Go with G.o.d!" For a second time he bowed and kissed the hand he held, then, taking Jose Sanchez intimately by the arm, he turned to the door.

Dolores collapsed into her seat with an exclamation. "Caramba! The man is a demon! And such eyes. Uf! They say he was so furious at losing those two sisters I told you about that he killed the soldier with the very weapon--"

Dolores was interrupted by Longorio's voice beneath the open window.

The general stood, cap in hand, holding up to Alaire a solitary wild flower which he had plucked beside the track.

"See!" he cried. "It is the color of your adorable eyes--blue like a sapphire gem. I saw it peeping at me, and it was lonely. But now, behold how it smiles--like a star that sees Paradise, eh? And I, too, have seen Paradise." He placed the delicate bloom in Alaire's fingers and was gone.

"Cuidado!" breathed Dolores. "There is blood on it; the blood of innocents. He will burn for a million years in h.e.l.l, that man."

Longorio made good his promise; soon a grizzled old teniente, with six soldiers, was transferred as a bodyguard to the American lady, and then, after some further delay, the military train departed. Upon the rear platform stood a tall, slim, khaki-clad figure, and until the car had dwindled away down the track, foreshortening to a mere rectangular dot, Luis Longorio remained motionless, staring with eager eyes through the capering dust and the billowing heat waves.

Jose Sanchez came plowing into Alaire's car, tremendously excited.

"Look, senora!" he cried. "Look what the general gave me," and he proudly displayed Longorio's service revolver. Around Jose's waist was the cartridge-belt and holster that went with the weapon. "With his own hands he buckled it about me, and he said, 'Jose, something tells me you are a devil for bravery. Guard your mistress with your life, for if any mishap befalls her I shall cut out your heart with my own hands.'

Those were his very words, senora. Caramba! There is a man to die for."

Nor was this the last of Longorio's dramatic surprises. Shortly after the train had got under way the lieutenant in command of Alaire's guard brought her a small package, saying:

"The general commanded me to hand you this, with his deepest regard."

Alaire accepted the object curiously. It was small and heavy and wrapped in several leaves torn from a notebook, and it proved to be nothing less than the splendid diamond-and-ruby ring she had admired.

"G.o.d protect us, now!" murmured Dolores, crossing herself devoutly.

VIII

BLAZE JONES'S NEMESIS

Blaze Jones rode up to his front gate and dismounted in the shade of the big ebony-tree. He stepped back and ran an approving eye over another animal tethered there. It was a thoroughbred bay mare he had never seen, and as he scanned her good points he reflected that the time had come when he would have to accustom himself to the sight of strange horses along his fence and strange automobiles beside the road, for Paloma was a woman now, and the young men of the neighborhood had made the discovery. Yes, and Paloma was a pretty woman; therefore the hole under the ebony-tree would probably be worn deep by impatient hoofs. He was glad that most of the boys preferred saddles to soft upholstery, for it argued that some vigor still remained in Texas manhood, and that the country had not been entirely ruined by motors, picture-shows, low shoes, and high collars. Of course the youths of this day were nothing like the youths of his own, and yet--Blaze let his gaze linger fondly on the high-bred mare and her equipment--here at least was a person who knew a good horse, a good saddle, and a good gun.

As he came up the walk he heard Paloma laugh, and his own face lightened, for Paloma's merriment was contagious. Then as he mounted the steps and turned the corner of the "gallery" he uttered a hearty greeting.

"Dave Law! Where in the world did you drop from?"

Law uncoiled himself and took the ranchman's hand. "h.e.l.lo, Blaze! I been ordered down here to keep you straight."

"Pshaw! Now who's giving you orders, Dave?"

"Why, I'm with the Rangers."

"Never knew a word of it. Last I heard you was filibustering around with the Maderistas."

Blaze seated himself with a grateful sigh where the breeze played over him. He was a big, bearlike, swarthy man with the square-hewn, deep-lined face of a tragedian, and a head of long, curly hair which he wore parted in a line over his left ear. Jones was a character, a local landmark. This part of Texas had grown up with Blaze, and, inasmuch as he had sprung from a free race of pioneers, he possessed a splendid indifference to the artificial fads of dress and manners. It was only since Paloma had attained her womanhood that he had been forced to fight down his deep-seated distrust of neckwear and store clothes and the like; but now that his daughter had definitely a.s.serted her rights, he had acquired numerous unwelcome graces, and no longer ventured among strangers without the stamp of her approval upon his appearance. Only at home did he maintain what he considered a manly independence of speech and habit. To-day, therefore, found him in a favorite suit of baggy, wrinkled linen and with a week's stubble of beard upon his chin.

He was so plainly an outdoor man that the air of erudition lent him by the pair of gold-rimmed spectacles owlishly perched upon his sunburned nose was strangely incongruous.

"So you're a Ranger, and got notches on your gun." Blaze rolled and lit a tiny cigarette, scarcely larger than a wheat straw. "Well, you'd ought to make a right able thief-catcher, Dave, only for your size--you're too long for a man and you ain't long enough for a snake.

Still, I reckon a thief would have trouble getting out of your reach, and once you got close to him--How many men have you killed?"

"Counting Mexicans?" Law inquired, with a smile.

"h.e.l.l! n.o.body counts them."

"Not many."

"That's good." Blaze nodded and relit his cigarette, which he had permitted promptly to smolder out. "The Force ain't what it was. Most of the boys nowadays join so they can ride a horse cross-lots, pack a pair of guns, and give rein to the predilections of a vicious ancestry.

They're bad rams, most of 'em."

"There aren't many," said Paloma. "Dave tells me the whole Force has been cut down to sixteen."

"That's plenty," her father averred. "It's like when Cap'n Bill McDonald was sent to stop a riot in Dallas. He came to town alone, and when the citizens asked him where his men was, he said, 'h.e.l.l! 'Ain't I enough? There's only one riot.' Are you workin' up a case, Dave?"

"Um-m--yes! People are missing a lot of stock hereabouts."

"It's these blamed refugees from the war! A Mexican has to steal something or he gets run down and pore. If it ain't stock, it's something else. Why, one morning I rode into Jonesville in time to see four Greasers walkin' down the main street with feed-sacks over their shoulders. Each one of those gunnie's had something long and flat and heavy in it, and I growed curious. When I investigated, what d'you suppose I found? Tombstones! That's right; four marble beauties fresh from the cemetery. Well, it made me right sore, for I'd helped to start Jonesville. I was its city father. I'd made the place fit to live in, and I aimed to keep it safe to die in, and so, bein' a sort of left-handed, self-appointed deppity-sheriff, I rounded up those ghouls and drove 'em to the county-seat in my spring wagon. I had the evidence propped up against the front of our real-estate office--'Sacred to the Memory' of four of our leading citizens--so I jailed 'em. But that's all the good it did."

"Couldn't convict, eh?"

Blaze lit his cigarette for the third time. "The prosecuting attorney and I wasn't very good friends, seeing as how I'd had to kill his daddy, so he turned 'em loose. I'm d.a.m.ned if those four Greasers didn't beat me back to Jonesville." Blaze shook his head ruminatively. "This was a hard country, those days. There wasn't but two honest men in this whole valley--and the other one was a n.i.g.g.e.r."

Dave Law's duties as a Ranger rested lightly upon him; his instructions were vague, and he had a leisurely method of "working up" his evidence.

Since he knew that Blaze possessed a thorough knowledge of this section and its people, it was partly business which had brought him to the Jones home this afternoon.

Strictly speaking, Blaze was not a rancher, although many of his acres were under cultivation and he employed a sizable army of field-hands.

His disposition was too adventurous, his life had been too swift and varied, for him to remain interested in slow agricultural pursuits; therefore, he had speculated heavily in raw lands, and for several years past he had devoted his energies to a gigantic colonization scheme. Originally Blaze had come to the Rio Grande valley as a stock-raiser, but the natural advantages of the country had appealed to his gambling instinct, and he had "gone broke" buying land.

He had located, some fifteen miles below the borders of Las Palmas, and there he had sunk a large fortune; then as a first step in his colonization project he had founded the town of Jonesville. Next he had caused the branch line of the Frisco railroad to be extended until it linked his holdings with the main system, after which he had floated a big irrigation company; and now the feat of paying interest on its bonds and selling farms under the ditch to Northern people kept him fully occupied. It was by no means a small operation in which he was engaged. The venture had taken foresight, courage, infinite hard work; and Blaze was burdened with responsibilities that would have broken down a man of weaker fiber.

But his pet relaxation was reminiscence. His own experience had been wide, he knew everybody in his part of the state, and although events in his telling were sometimes colored by his rich imagination, the information he could give was often of the greatest value--as Dave Law knew.

After a time the latter said, casually, "Tell me something about Tad Lewis."

Blaze looked up quickly. "What d'you want to know?"