"No chairs for us! You fork over Gonzalez's money that you tricked out of him!"

"I take Gonzalez's money! I? Senores?"

"It's a hundred and twenty dollars that he earned honestly, and the quicker you lay your hands on it the better for you!" Bob roared back.

Pedro was quite impa.s.sive.

"Senores, if Gonzalez need money--senores, I honest man! Senores, sit down! We talk!" Pedro dropped back into his chair and his hand, with cat-like quickness, shot under the faro table.

Jack had come through the door after Jim and Bob. He was standing a little behind them, and while they had been watching Pedro's face he had watched Pedro's movements.

"Pedro, take your hand out from under the table and without your gun!"

said Jack; and Jim Galway caught a thrill in Jack's voice that he had heard in the _arroyo_.

Pedro looked into Senor Don't Care's eyes and saw a bead, though they were not looking along the glint of a revolver barrel.

"_Si_, senor!" said Pedro, settling back in the chair with palms out in intimation of his pacific intentions.

"Now, Pedro, you have Gonzalez's money, haven't you?" Jack went on, in the reasoning fashion that he had adopted to Leddy in the store. "And you aren't going to make yourself or Bob trouble. You are going to give it back!"

"_Si_, senor!" said Pedro wincing.

While he was producing the money and counting it, his furtive glance kept watch of Jack. Then, as the committee turned to go, he suddenly exclaimed with angry surprise and disillusion:

"You got no gun!"

While Jim and Bob waited for Jack to precede them out of the door Jim had time to note Pedro's baleful, piercing look at Jack's back.

"Just as I told you, Jack--and I reckon you saved a big row. You just put a scare into that h.e.l.lion with a word, like you had a thousand devils in you!" said Jim.

"It's all over!" Jack answered, looking more hurt than pleased over the congratulations. "Very fortunately over."

"But," Jim observed, tensely, "Pedro is not only Leddy's bitter partisan and ready to do his bidding, Pedro's a bit loco, besides--the kind that hesitates at nothing when he gets a grudge. You've got to look out for him."

"Oh, no!" said Jack, in the full swing of a Senor Don't Care mood.

Jim and Bob began to entertain the feelings of Mary on the pa.s.s, when she thought of Jack as walking over precipices regardless of danger signs.

After all, did he really know how to shoot? If he would not look after himself, it was their duty to look after him. Jim suggested that the rule which Jack had made for Leddy should have universal application. No one whosoever should wear arms in Little Rivers without a permit. The new ordinance had the Doge's approval; and Jim and Bob, both of whom had permits, kept watch that it was enforced, particularly in the case of Pedro Nogales.

Meanwhile, Jack kept the ten-hour-a-day law. His alfalfa was growing with prolific rapidity, but Firio had the air of one who waits between journeys.

"Never the trail again?" he asked temptingly, one day.

"Never the trail again!" Jack declared firmly.

"_Si, si, si_--the trail again!"

"You think so? Then why do you ask?"

"To make a question," answered Firio. "The big sadness will be too strong. It will make you move--_si_!"

"The big sadness!" Jack exclaimed. He seized Firio by the shoulders and looked narrowly at him, and Firio met the gaze with soft, puzzling lights in his eyes. "Ho! ho! A big sadness! How do you know?" he laughed.

"I learn on the trail when I watch you look at the stars. And Senorita Ewold, she know; but she think the big sadness a devil. She--" and he paused.

"She--yes?" Jack asked.

"She--" Firio started again.

Jack suddenly raised his hands from Firio's shoulders in a gesture of interruption. It was not exactly Firio's place to hazard opinions about Mary Ewold.

"Never mind!" he said, rather sharply.

But Firio proceeded fixedly to finish what he had to say.

"She has a big sadness, which makes her ride to the pa.s.s. She rides out so she can ride back smiling."

"Firio, don't mistake your imagination for divination!" Jack warned him.

As Firio did not understand the meaning of this he said nothing. Probably he would have said nothing even if he had understood.

"I'll show you the nature of the big sadness and that the devil is a joy devil when we harvest our first crop of alfalfa," Jack concluded. "Then I shall make a holiday! Then I shall be a real rancher and something is going to happen!"

"The trail!" exclaimed Firio, and the soft light in his eyes flashed.

"_Si_! The trail and the big spurs and the revolver in the holster!"

"No!"

But Firio said "_Si_"! with the supreme confidence of one who holds that belief in fulfilment will make any wish come true.

XVI

A CHANGE OF MIND

It was Sunday afternoon; or, to date it by an epochal event, the day after Jack's alfalfa crop had fallen before the mower. Mary was seated on the bench under the avenue of umbrella-trees reading a thin edition of Marcus Aurelius bound in flexible leather. Of late she had developed a fondness for the more austere philosophers. Jack, whose mood was entirely to the sonneteers, came softly singing down the avenue of palms and presented himself before her in a romping spirit of interruption.

"O expert in floriculture!" he said, "the humble pupil acting as a Committee of One has failed utterly to agree with himself as to the form of his new flowerbed. There must be a Committee of Two. Will you come?"

"Good! I am weary of Marcus. I can't help thinking that he too far antedates the Bordeaux mixture!" she answered, springing to her feet with positive enthusiasm.

He rarely met positive enthusiasm in her and everything in him called for it at the moment. He found it so inspiring that the problem of the bed was settled easily by his consent to all her suggestions--a too-ready consent, she told herself.

"After all, it is your flower garden," she reminded him.