Plumitas stopped, and gazing at Gallardo added:

"Besides, there are the admirers, the pupils, the young fellows that come chasing along behind. Senor Juan, tell the truth, which tire you more, the bulls, or all those hungry young bull-fighters who are always wanting favors of the _maestro_? The same thing happens to me. Didn't I tell you that we are equals! In every town there's some fine young fellow who dreams of being my heir and hopes to catch me some day sleeping in the shade of a tree and-blow my head off. A fine advertis.e.m.e.nt it will be for him who catches Plumitas!"

After this he got up and went to the stable followed by Potaje, and a quarter of an hour afterward he led out into the courtyard his strong mare, the inseparable companion of his wanderings. The big-boned animal seemed larger and handsomer after the brief hours of feasting in the mangers at La Rinconada. Plumitas stopped arranging his blanket over the horn to caress her flanks. She might indeed be content. Seldom would she be so well treated as at this hacienda of Senor Juan Gallardo. Now she must behave, for the journey would be long.

"And where art thou going, comrade?" said Potaje.

"You shouldn't ask that. Abroad through the land! I myself know not. To meet whatever comes along."

And putting the toe of his boot in one of the blackened and mud-bespattered stirrups, he gave a spring and rose into the saddle.

Gallardo moved away from Dona Sol, who contemplated the bandit's preparation for his journey with her mysterious eyes, her lips pale and compressed by emotion. The bull-fighter searched in the inside of his jacket and walked toward the rider offering him without ostentation some papers crushed in his hand.

"What is that?" said the bandit. "Money? Thanks, Senor Juan. You have heard that it is best to give me something when I leave an hacienda, but that is for others, for the rich who earn their money in flowery ease.

You earn it by exposing your life. We are companions. Keep it, Senor Juan."

Senor Juan put the bills back, somewhat annoyed by the bandit's refusal and by his determination to treat him as a comrade.

"You may tender me a bull if we ever meet in the ring," added Plumitas.

"That is worth more than all the gold in the world."

Dona Sol advanced till she stood close to one of the horseman's legs, and unfastening an autumn rose she wore on her breast she offered it silently, gazing at him with her gold-green eyes.

"For me?" asked the bandit in tones of surprise and wonder. "For me, Senora Marquesa?"

Seeing the lady's nod of affirmation he accepted the flower with embarra.s.sment, handling it stupidly as if it were of astonishing weight, not knowing where to put it, till at last he thrust it into a b.u.t.tonhole of his blouse, between the two ends of the red handkerchief he wore around his neck.

"This surely is good!" he exclaimed, his round face broadening into a smile. "Nothing to equal this ever happened to me before in all my life."

The rough horseman seemed touched and disturbed at the same time by the feminine character of the gift. Roses for him--!

He pulled at his mare's reins.

"Health to all, gentlemen! Until we meet again! Health, brave fellow!

Sometime I'll throw thee a cigar if thou dost stick thy lance in well."

He bade the _picador_ farewell, giving him a blow with his hand, and the centaur answered him with a slap on the thigh that made the bandit's vigorous muscles tremble. What a fine fellow, that Plumitas! Potaje, in his mellow state of intoxication, wished to take to the mountains in company with him.

"_Adios_! _Adios_!"

And setting spurs to his steed he rode away from the hacienda at a swift trot.

Gallardo manifested satisfaction on seeing him go. Then he looked at Dona Sol, who stood motionless, following the horseman with her eyes as he vanished in the distance.

"What a woman!" murmured the swordsman with dismay. "What a mad lady!"

It was good luck that Plumitas was ugly, and went ragged and dirty like a vagabond. If not, verily she would have gone with him.

CHAPTER X

A LOOK INTO THE FACE OF DEATH

"It seems a lie, Sebastian. A man like thee, with a wife and children, lending thyself to such wickedness. And I thought better of thee and had confidence in thee when thou wert travelling with Juaniyo! I worried not because he went with a person of character. Where are all those fine things, the honorable ideas and thy religion? Is this what is commanded in those Jew meetings that gather at the house of Don Joselito, the teacher?"

Nacional, alarmed at the indignation of Gallardo's mother, and moved by Carmen's tears as she wept in silence, her face hidden in her kerchief, defended himself stupidly. But as he heard the last words he sat erect with priestly gravity.

"Sena' Angustia', touch not my ideas and leave Don Joselito in peace, an it please you, for he has nothing to do with all this. By the life of the blue dove! I went to La Rincona' because my _matador_ ordered me. Do you know what a _cuadrilla_ is? Just the same as an army: discipline and servility! The _matador_ commands and one must obey. For these bull-fight customs descend from the times of the Inquisition and there is no more conservative trade."

"Clown!" screamed Senora Angustias. "Fine thou art with all thy fables about the Inquisition and Conservatives! Among you all you are killing that poor girl, who spends the whole day shedding tears like the Dolorosa. What thou art anxious about is to cover up my son's rascalities because he feeds thee."

"You have said it, Sena' Angustia'. Juaniyo feeds me, that's it. And since he feeds me, I have to obey him. But look here, Senora; put yourself in my place. My _matador_ tells me I must go to La Rincona'.

Good! And at the hour of leaving I find myself in the automobile with a very fine great lady. What can I do? My _matador_ commands. Moreover, I didn't go alone. Potaje went along and he is a person of years and respect."

The bull-fighter's mother was more indignant at this excuse.

"Potaje! A bad man, that Juaniyo would not keep in his _cuadrilla_ if he had any pride! Don't talk to me about that drunkard that beats his wife and keeps his children starving."

"Well, Potaje aside. I say I saw that great lady and what was I to do?

She was not a wanton; she is the niece of the marquis who is patron of the _maestro_--and you well know that bull-fighters have to be on good terms with people of power. They have to live off the public. Then, at the hacienda, nothing! I swear it to you by my own dear ones--nothing! I would be a fine fellow to stand such bad business, even though my _matador_ ordered me to! I am a decent man, Sena' Angustia'. By the life of the dove! When one is on the committee and is consulted on election-day, and counsellors and deputies clasp this hand you see here, can one do certain things? I repeat, nothing! They said _you_ in talking to one another, the same as you and I do; each one spent the night in his proper place; not a wicked look, not an ugly word. Decency at all hours. And if you would like to have Potaje come, he will tell you--"

But Carmen interrupted him with a plaintive voice, broken by sighs.

"In my house!" she groaned with an expression of agony. "At the hacienda! And she slept in my bed! I knew all about it before and I kept still, I kept still! But this! _Josu_! This--there's not another man in all Seville would dare do as much!"

Nacional intervened kindly.

"Be calm, Senora Carmen. Why, that was of no importance! Merely the visit of a female admirer of the _maestro's_ to the plantation, one who desired to see at close range how he lived in the country. These half foreign ladies are always capricious and queer. You ought to have seen the French women when the _cuadrilla_ went to fight at Nimes and Arles!

The whole thing is nothing! the whole thing, _liquid_! Man alive! by the blue dove! I would like to see the tattler that brought such news!"

Carmen continued weeping without listening to the _banderillero's_ indignant protestations, while Sena' Angustias, seated in an arm-chair against which her super-abundant obesity rose and fell, frowned and compressed her hairy, wrinkled lips.

"Shut up, Sebastian, and don't lie," said the old woman. "I know it all.

That trip to the hacienda was an indecent carousal, a gypsy's revel.

They even say you had Plumitas, the robber, with you."

Here Nacional gave a start of surprise and anxiety. He imagined he saw an ill-appearing horseman with a greasy hat entering the courtyard, treading the marble flags and, dismounting from his mare, pointing a carbine at him for being a babbler and a coward. Then he seemed to see c.o.c.ked hats, many c.o.c.ked hats of shining rubber, moustached mouths questioning, hands scribbling, and the whole _cuadrilla_, in their spangled costumes, bound elbow to elbow on the road to prison. Here truly he must make energetic denial.

"_Liquid!_ All _liquid!_ What say you about Plumitas? Everything was decent there. Man alive! Nothing was lacking but that a citizen like myself, who carries to the voting boxes more than a hundred votes from my ward, should be accused of being a friend of Plumitas!"

Senora Angustias, overcome by Nacional's protests, and a little uncertain about this last report, ceased insisting on it. Good; nothing about Plumitas! But the other thing! The trip to the hacienda with that--woman! And firm in the blindness of motherhood, which would put all the responsibility for her son's misdeeds upon his companions, she went on scolding Nacional.

"I shall tell thy wife what thou art. The poor thing killing herself in her shop from daybreak till nightfall, and thou going off on revels like a lad. Thou shouldst be ashamed. At thy years! With such a troop of children--"

The _banderillero_ departed, fleeing from Senora Angustias, who in the storm of her indignation displayed the same nimble tongue as in the days when she worked in the Tobacco Factory. He resolved not to return to his master's house.