"Well, I should rather say she was!" rejoined the Colonel, whilst the boys chuckled quietly. "She can knock the spots out of these boys at that game."

"That's what she can," a.s.sented Joe good-humouredly; "she can whip us the worst kind. She's liable to whip a'most any stranger that comes along, too," and he smiled significantly at me.

Rafaeleta, meanwhile, turned fresh steaks in the frying-pan, and paid no heed to the conversation.

"Where did you kill the antelope, Squito?" inquired Don Cabeza.

"Oh, pshaw!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed indifferently.

"Well, where was it? We want to know, because----"

"In the big draw, back of Clanton's ciniky, then. Have another biscuit, Colonel?" And with her sleeves rolled up on her little muscular brown arms, she approached the table with the biscuit-tray in one hand, and a fork in the other.

"How far off were you from him?"

"Shan't answer any more questions," she said capriciously, but with hopeless decision. And seating herself at the head of the table, she appropriated Joe's m.u.f.fin and Jake's teaspoon. "Joe, you can get another, and Jake, there's one in the cupboard."

Supper over, Jake "washed up," whilst Joe took a lantern and went off to milk the cows (which grazed free during the day and came in at night to their penned-up calves). The rest of us retired to the adjoining room, and gathered round the blazing logs to talk "cattle" and their prospects. On such occasions Squito would nestle down on a log by the hearth, and, taking no part in the conversation, glance keenly from speaker to speaker, or gaze dreamily into the fire, rolling herself little Mexican cigarettes, in bits of maize-leaf, from time to time.

Sometimes, during a lull in the conversation, she would hazard prettily, addressing either the Colonel or me: "Won't you tell us some more about them foreign lands?" When the boys, having finished their work, rejoined us, she generally slipped off silently to her own room.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Cheeky.

[13] Spend his money.

[14] Was very successful.

[15] A counter.

[16] Spends money.

[17] Putting him in prison.

[18] Wild.

[19] Savage.

[20] Took him to task.

[21] Armed.

[22] Left.

[23] Pluck.

[24] Have a spree.

[25] Counters.

[26] Deputy Marshal.

CHAPTER IX.

ANIMAS VALLEY.--III.

It was still dark when Murray rose and looked outside, letting an eager rush of frosty air into the room that brought me back from heaven knows where I had strayed in dozing. Without--

"The dawn in russet mantle clad, Peeped o'er the brow of yonder distant hill,"

--old Animas Peak, which loomed up indistinct and colourless in the distance. Everything was ghostly and still, even the breath of chill wind that crept almost noiselessly up the valley. Presently, like a great trumpet's blare, the calling of a far-off cow to its calf rang through the hollow silence. Swiftly the red ripples of sunrise broke on the gray sea of dawn. The spectral Animas issued from obscurity, clad regally in purple and a few plumes of silver mist;

"The fair star that gems the glittering coronet of morn,"

in these lat.i.tudes, shrank back and paled out of sight.

"And like a lobster boiled, the morn From black to red began to turn."

"Whist! it is cold!" we gasped, as we broke the ice in the pails of water that stood on a bench under the wall, and proceeded to wash as we might.

While breakfast was being prepared, I walked out on to the cienega to look for ducks. But one shot cleared the swamp, and returning to the house with a mallard, I fell in with Squito and Joe driving the band of cow-ponies into the corral. With a broad-brimmed, leather-banded cow-boy hat on, an old pair of cow-boy, high-heeled[27] Wellington boots, a red canvas overcoat of old man Murray's, buckled in round her waist by her cartridge-belt (to which was now attached a genuine six-shooter), and her vivid little face nestled in its deep collar, the child was a quaint picture.

"Oh, pshaw!" she exclaimed, with a merry little laugh of malice, for she utterly refused to believe in a "Britisher," "you've 'done' got up, then! Joe, the man's up a'ready!" (She always called me "the man.")

"Why not?" rejoined Joe, with a smile of greeting. "You ain't the on'y one that can get up mornings."

"Why, no! do you suppose that you have a monopoly of early hours?"

"Yes, yes, yes! That's what I do, exactly. The Colonel said th' other day, when I was wanting to be 'a capitalist,' that he'd give me all the gold that I could see in the valley at sunrise. You ain't got no sort o'

right to come prospecting around now. I've 'denounced' it all--it's all mine, all mine." And she threw an arm out, and grasped at the sunny skies, laughingly. "'Sides" (mischievously), "ain't you one of these dudes as the Colonel brings down sometimes from El Paso and Silver, that wants kettles o' hot water to twelve o'clock? Oh, pshaw! we ain't got to joshing you yet! You wait till the boys and me puts up a job on you."

"Shucks! you think n.o.body ain't got no saga.s.s but you," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Joe, as, launching her sauciest grimace at me, with a seat so sure and finished, that it was a treat to watch her, Squito shot off at a tangent on the broncho she was riding, with only a _hackamore_ or headstall, to bring back a couple of ponies that were straying from the bunch.

"Well, now, you boys," said Murray one morning after breakfast, "we want to keep on picking up the calves that ain't branded. Joe, you'd best ride in back of Cunningham's. Jake, you make a bend out towards the Peak, and the Double Adobes. I'll go in towards the Baker Place and Skeleton Canon, there's two big calves runs in there somewhere that we missed at the round up. We've got to get up that band of mares that's running with Charles d.i.c.kens, and count 'em, one day this week, too."

"That's so," chimed in Squito; "I ain't got a colt at all in the corrals to 'gentle' now."

Squito, who was perfectly fearless, and unerring with the _lariat_, used to amuse herself during the day with 'halter-breaking' and 'gentling'