"I think," retorted Jack, grinning a little, "somebody else's nerves are kinda frazzled, too. I don't want you to begin worrying over my affairs, Dade. I'm not," he a.s.serted with unconvincing emphasis. "But all the same, I'd like to get my fingers on the fellow that took my riata!"

Since he formulated that wish after he reached the doorway of the roomy box-stall where Surry was housed, he faced a badly scared peon as the door swung open.

"Senor--I--pardon, Senor! But I feared that harm might come to the riata in the night. There are many guests, Senor, who speak ill of gringos, and I heard a whisper--"

Jack, gripping Diego by the shoulders, halted his nervous explanations.

"What about the riata?" he cried. "Do you know where it is?"

"Si, Senor. Me, I took it from the senor's saddle, for I feared harm would be done if it were left there to tempt those who would laugh to see the senor dragged to the death to-day. Senor, that is Jose's purpose; from a San Vincente vaquero I heard--and he had it from the lips of Manuel. Jose will la.s.so the senor, and the horse will run away with Jose, and the senor will be killed. Ah, Senor!--Jose's skill is great; and Manuel swears that now he will truly fight like a demon, because the prayers of the senorita go with Jose. Her glove she sent him for a token--Manuel swears that it is so, and a message that he is to kill thee, Senor!"

"But my riata?" To Diego's amazement, his blue-eyed G.o.d seemed not in the least disturbed, either by plot or gossip.

"Ah, the riata! Last night I greased it well, Senor, so that to-day it would be soft. And this morning at daybreak I stretched it here in the stall and rubbed it until it shone. Now it is here, Senor, where no knife-point can steal into it and cunningly cut the strands that are hidden, so that the senor would not observe and would place faith upon it and be betrayed." Diego lifted his loose, linen shirt and disclosed the riata coiled about his middle.

The eyes of his G.o.d, when they rested upon the brown body wrapped round and round with the rawhide on which his life would later hang, were softer than they had been since he had craved the kiss that had been denied him, many hours before. It was only the blind worship and the loyalty of a peon whose feet were bare, whose hands were calloused with labor, whose face was seamed with the harshness of his serfdom. Only a peon's loyalty; but something hard and bitter and reckless, something that might have proved a more serious handicap than a strange riata, dropped away from Jack's mood and left him very nearly his normal self.

It was as if the warmth of the rawhide struck through the chill which Teresita's unreasoning spite had brought to the heart of him, and left there a little glow.

"Gracias, Diego," he said, and smiled in the way that made one love him.

"Let it stay until I have need of it. It will surely fly true, to-day, since it has been warmed thus by thy friendship."

From an impulse of careless kindness he said it, even though he had been touched by the peon's anxiety for his welfare. But Diego's heart was near to bursting with grat.i.tude and pride; those last two words--he would not have exchanged the memory of them for the gold medal itself.

That his blue-eyed G.o.d should address him, a mere peon, as "thy," the endearing, intimate p.r.o.noun kept for one's friends! The tears stood in Diego's black eyes when he heard; and Diego was no weakling, but a straight-backed stoic of an Indian, who stood almost as tall as the Senor Jack himself and who could throw a full-grown steer to the ground by twisting its head. He bowed low and turned to fumble the sweet, dried gra.s.ses in Surry's manger; and beneath his coa.r.s.e shirt the feel of the rawhide was sweeter than the embrace of a loved woman.

"You want to take mighty good care of this little nag of mine," Dade observed irrelevantly, his fingers combing wistfully the crinkly mane.

"There'll never be another like him in this world. And if there was, it wouldn't be him."

"I reckon it's asking a good deal of you, to think of using him at all."

For the first time Jack became conscious of his selfishness. "I won't, Dade, if you'd rather I didn't."

"Don't be a blamed idiot. You know I want you to go ahead and use him; only--I'd hate to see him hurt."

To Dade the words seemed to be wrenched from the very fibers of his friendship. He loved that horse more than he had ever believed he could love an animal; and he was mentally sacrificing him to Jack's need.

Jack went up and rubbed Surry's nose playfully; and it cost Dade a jealous twinge to see how the horse responded to the touch.

"He won't get hurt. I've taught him how to take care of himself; haven't I, Diego?" And he put the statement into Spanish, so that the peon could understand.

"Si, he will never let the riata touch him, Senor. Truly, it is well that he will come at the call, for otherwise he would never again he caught!" Diego grinned, checked himself on the verge of venturing another comment, and tilted his head sidewise instead, his ears perked toward the medley of fiesta sounds outside.

"Listen, Senors! That is not the squeal of carts alone, which I hear. It is the carriage that has wheels made of little sticks, that chatters much when it moves. Americanos are coming, Senors."

"Americanos!" Dade glanced quickly at Jack, mutely questioning. "I wonder if--" He gave Surry a hasty, farewell slap on the shoulder and went out into the sunshine and the clamor of voices and laughter, with the creaking of carts threaded through it all. The faint, unmistakable rattle of a wagon driven rapidly, came towards them. While they stood listening, came also a confused jumble of voices emitting sounds which the two guessed were intended for a song. A little later, above the high-pitched rattle of the wagon wheels, they heard the raucous, long-drawn "Yank-ee doo-oo-dle da-a-andy!" which confirmed their suspicions and identified the comers as gringos beyond a doubt.

"Must be a crowd from San Francisco," said Jack needlessly. "I wrote and told Bill about the fiesta, when I sent up after some clothes. I told him to come down and take it in--and I guess he's coming."

Bill was; and he was coming largely, emphatically, and vaingloriously.

He had a wagon well loaded with his more intimate friends, including Jim. He had a following of half his Committee of Vigilance and all the men of like caliber who could find a horse or a mule to straddle. Even the Roman-nosed buckskin of sinister history was in the van of the procession that came charging up the slope with all the speed it could muster after the journey from the town on the tip of the peninsula.

In the wagon were a drum, two fifes, a cornet, and much confusion of voices. Bill, enthroned upon the front seat beside the driver of the four-horse team, waved both arms exuberantly and started the song all over again, so that they had to sing very fast indeed in order to finish by the time they swung up to the patio and stopped.

Bill scrambled awkwardly down over the wheel and gripped the hands of those two whose faces welcomed him without words. "Well, we got here,"

he announced, including the whole cavalcade with one sweeping gesture.

"Started before daylight, too, so we wouldn't miss none of the doings." He tilted his head toward Dade's ear and jerked his thumb towards the wagon. "Say! I brought the boys along, in case--" His left eyelid lowered lazily and flew up again into its normal position as Don Andres, his sombrero in his hand, came towards them across the patio, smiling a dignified welcome.

Dade spoke not a word in reply, but his eyes brightened wonderfully.

There was still the element of danger, and on a larger scale than ever.

But it was heartening to have Bill Wilson's capable self to stand beside him. Bill could handle turbulent crowds better than any man Dade had ever seen.

They lingered, greeting acquaintances here and there among the arrivals, until Bill was at liberty again.

"Got any greaser here that can talk white man's talk, and you can trust?" was Bill's mild way of indicating his need of an interpreter, when the fiesta crowd had grown to the proportions of a mult.i.tude that buzzed like giant bees in a tree of ripe figs.

"Why? What do you want of one? Valencia will help you out, I guess."

Dade's hesitation was born of inattention rather than reluctance. He was watching the gesticulating groups of Californians as a gambler watches the faces of his opponents, and the little weather-signs did not rea.s.sure him.

"Well, there's good money to be picked out of this crowd," said Bill, pushing his hands deep into his pockets. "I can't understand their lingo, but faces talk one language; and I don't care what's the color of the skin. I've been reading what's wrote in their eyes and around their mouths. I can get big odds on Jack, here, if I can find somebody to talk for me. How about it, Jack? I've heard some say there's more than the gold medal and a horse up on this lariat game. I've heard some say you two have put your necks in the jack-pot. On the quiet, what do you reckon you're going to do to the greaser?"

Jack shifted his glance to Dade's face, tense with anxiety while he waited. He looked out over the slope dotted thickly with people, laughed briefly and mirthlessly, and then looked full at Bill.

"I reckon I'm going to kill him," he said very quietly.

Big Bill stared. "Say! I'm glad I ain't the greaser," he said dryly, answering a certain something in Jack's eyes and around his lips. Bill had heard men threaten death, before now; but he did not think of this as a threat. To him it seemed a sentence of death.

"Jack, you'll be sorry for it," warned Dade under his breath. "Don't go and--"

"I don't want to hear any remarks on the subject." Never in all the years of their friendship had Jack spoken to him in so harsh a tone.

"G.o.d Almighty couldn't talk me out of it. I'm going to kill him. Let it go at that." He turned abruptly and walked away to the stable, and the two stood perfectly still and watched him out of sight.

"He'll do it, too," said Dade distressfully. "There's something in this I don't understand--but he'll do it."

CHAPTER XXII

THE BATTLE OF BEASTS

Sweating, impatient humans wedged tight upon the seats around the rim of the great adobe corral, waited for the bulls to dash in through the gate and be goaded into the frenzy that would thrill the spectators pleasurably. Meantime, those spectators munched sweets and gossiped, smoked cigarettes and gossiped; sweltered under the glare of the sun and gossiped; and always they talked of the gringos, who had come one hundred strong and never a woman among them; one hundred strong, and every man of them dangling pistols at his hips--pistols that could shoot six times before they must be reloaded, and shoot with marvelous exactness of aim at that; one hundred strong, and every one of the hundred making bets that the gringo with the red-brown hair would win the medalla oro from Don Jose, who three times had fought and kept it flashing on his breast, so that now no vaquero dared lift eyes to it!

Truly, those gringos were a mad people, said the gossips. They would see the blue-eyed one flung dead upon the ground, and then--would the gringos want to fight? Knives were instinctively loosened under sashes when the owners talked of the possibility. Knives are swift and keen, but those guns that could shoot six times with one loading--Gossip preferred to dwell greedily upon the details of the quarrel between the young Don Jose and his gringo rival.

There were whispers also of a quarrel between the senorita and her gringo lover, and it was said that the young senorita prayed last night that Jose would win. But there were other whispers than that: One, that the maid of the senorita had been seen to give a rose and a written message into the hands of the Senor Allen, not an hour ago; and had gone singing to her mistress again, and smiling while she sang. Truly, that did not look as if the senorita had prayed for Jose! The Senor Allen had kept the rose. Look you! It was a token, and he would doubtless wear it upon his breast in the fight, where he hoped later to wear the medalla oro--but where the hands would be folded instead while the padres said ma.s.s for him; if indeed ma.s.s could be said over a dead gringo! There was laughter to follow that conceit. And so they talked, and made the tedious time of waiting seem shorter than it was.

Late comers looked for seats, found none, and were forced to content themselves with such perches as neighboring trees and the roofs of the outbuildings might afford. Peons who had early scrambled to the insecure vantage-point of the nearest stable roof, were hustled off to make room for a group of Salinas caballeros who arrived late. This was merely the bull-fighting coming now; but bull-fighting never palls, even though bigger things are yet in store. For there is always the chance that a horse may be gored to death--even that a man may die horribly. Such things have been and may be again; so the tardy ones climbed and scurried and attained breathlessness and a final resting-place together.

Came a season of frenzied yelling, breathless moments of suspense, and stamping that threatened disaster to the seats. Two bulls in succession had been let into the corral, bellowed under the shower of be-ribboned barbs and went down, fighting valiantly to the last.

Blood-l.u.s.ting, the great crowd screamed importunities for more. "Bring out the bear!" was their demand. "Let us see that she-bear fight the big bull which has been reserved for the combat!"