"But, Senor--" There are times when pride drops away from the proudest man and leaves him weak to the very core of him; weak and humbled beyond words.

Big Jerry Simpson saved that situation from becoming intolerable. With Moll's great ears flopping solemnly to herald his approach, Jerry rode up, perfectly aware that he brought a murmur of curiosity from those who saw his coming.

For Jerry was leading Manuel by the ear; Manuel with his hands tied behind him with Jerry's red bandanna; Manuel with his lips drawn away from his teeth in the desire to kill, and his eyes sullen with the impotence of that desire.

"Sa-ay," drawled Jerry, when he came up to the little group, "what d'ye want done with this here greaser that fired on Jack? Some of the fellers over there wanted to take him out and hang him, but I kinda hated to draw attention away from Jack's p'formance--which was right interesting.

Bill Wilson, he reckoned I better fetch him over here and ask you fellers about it; Bill says this mob of greasers might make a fuss if the agony's piled on too thick, but whatever you say will be did." With his unoccupied hand he helped himself to a generous chew of tobacco, and spat gravely into the dust.

"Fer as I'm concerned," he drawled lazily, "I'm willin' to help string him up. He done as dirty a trick as ever I seen, and he done it deliberate. I had m' eye peeled fer him all the time, and I seen he wasn't goin' to stand back and let Jack git the best of that greaser if he could help it. He was cunnin'--but shucks! I see all along why he kept that gun p'inted out front--"

"Turn him loose," said Dade suddenly, interrupting him. "We don't want to start any trouble, Jerry. He may need hanging, but we can't afford to give him what he deserves. It's a ticklish crowd, right now; they've lost a lot on the duel, and they've drunk enough wine to swim a mule.

Turn him loose. I mean it," he added, when he caught the incipient rebellion in Jerry's weather-beaten face. "I'm bossing things here to-day. He didn't hit anybody, and I'm beginning to think we can get through the day without any real trouble, if we go easy."

"Wa-al--" Jerry scratched his stubbly jaw reflectively with his free hand, and looked down at his captive. "I'll give him a derned good wallopin', then, just to learn him manners. I've been wantin' to lick him since yesterday mornin' when he tried to drive off Bawley and Lay-fayette and William Penn. I lost two hours off'n my work, argyin'

with him. I'll take that outa his hide, right now."

He induced Moll to turn around, and led Manuel away from the presence of the women lest they should be shocked at his deed; and on the cool side of the farthest shed he did indeed give Manuel a "derned good walloping." After which he took a fresh chew of tobacco, lounged over to where Moll waited and switched desultorily at the flies, mounted, and went placidly home to his Mary.

Bill Wilson, having collected their winnings and his own, sought Dade and Jack, where they were lying under the shade of a sycamore just beyond the rim of the crowd chattering shrilly of the later events. With a grunt of relief to be rid of the buzzing, Bill flung himself down beside them and plucked a cigar from an inner pocket.

"Say," he began, after he had bitten off the end of the cigar and had moistened the whole with his tongue. "Them greasers sure do hate to come forward with their losings! Some bets I never will be able to collect; but I got a lot--enough to pay for the trouble of coming down." He rolled over upon his back and lay smoking and looking up into the mottled branches of the tree; thought of something, and lifted himself to an elbow so that he faced Jack.

"Sa-ay, I thought you said you was going to kill that greaser," he challenged quizzically.

Jack shrugged his shoulders, took two long draws on his cigarette, and blew one of his pet smoke-rings. "I did." He moistened his lips and blew another ring. "At least, I killed the biggest part of him--and that's his pride."

Bill grunted, lay down again, and stared up at the wide-p.r.o.nged sycamore leaves. "Darn my oldest sister's cat's eyes if I ever seen anything like it!" he exploded suddenly, and closed his eyes in a vast content.

From the barbecue pits there came an appetizing odor of roasting beef; high-keyed voices flung good-humored taunts, and once they heard a great shout of laughter surge through the crowd gathered there. From the great platform built under a group of live oaks near the patio they heard the resonant plunk-plunk-plunk of a harp making ready for the dance, and the shrill laughter of slim senoritas hovering there. Down the slope before the three the shadows stretched longer and longer. A violin tw.a.n.ged in the tuning, the harp-strings crooning the key.

"You fellows are going to dance, ain't yuh?" Bill inquired lazily, when his cigar was half gone to ashes and smoke. "Jack, here, can get pardners enough to keep him going fer a week--judging by the eyes them Spanish girls have been making at him since the duel and the horse-breaking.

"Say! How about that sa.s.sy-eyed Picardo girl? I ain't seen you and her in speaking distance all day; and the way you was buzzing around her when I was down here before--"

"Say, Jack," Dade interrupted, diplomacy winning against politeness, "I never dreamed you'd have the nerve to try that fancy corkscrew throw of yours before all that crowd. Why, after two years to get out of practice, you took an awful chance of making a fool of yourself! Y'see, Bill," he explained with a deliberate garrulity, "that throw he made when he caught the horse was the finest bit of rope-work that's been done to-day. I don't believe there's another man in the crowd that could do it; and the chances are they never saw it done before, even! I know I never saw but one man beside Jack that could do it. Jack was always at it, when we happened to be laying around with nothing to do, and I know he had to keep his hand in, or he'd make a fizzle of it. Of course," he conceded, "you didn't miss--but if you had--Wow!" He shook his head at the bare possibility.

Jack grinned at him. "I'm not saying how much moonlight I used up, practicing out in the orchard when everybody else was asleep. I reckon I've made that corkscrew five thousand times in the last three weeks!"

"Where you belong," bantered Dade, "is on the stage. You do love to create a sensation, better than any one I ever--"

"Senors--" Diego came hurriedly out of the shadows behind them. "The patron begs that you will honor his table by dining with him to-night.

In one little half-hour will he hope to see you; and Don Jose Pacheco will also be happy to meet the senors, if it is the pleasure of the senors to meet him and dine in his company. The patron," added Diego, with the faintest suspicion of a twinkle in his pensive black eyes, "desires also that I shall extend to you the deep regret of the senora and the senorita because it will be impossible for them to be present."

The three looked at one another, and in Bill's eyes dawned slowly the light of understanding.

"Tell the patron we are honored by the invitation, and that it gives us much pleasure to accept," Dade replied for the three of them, after a moment spent in swift, mental measuring of the situation. "Jack, you've got to get them b.l.o.o.d.y clothes off, and some decent ones on. Come on, Bill; half an hour ain't any too much time to get ready in."

Half-way to the house they walked without saying a word. Then Dade, walking between the two, suddenly clapped a hand down upon the shoulder of each.

"Say, I could holler my head off!" he exulted. "I'm going to quit worrying about anything, after this; the nights I've laid awake and worried myself purple over this darned fiesta--or the duel, rather! And things are turning out smooth as a man could ask.

"Jack, I'm proud to death of you, and that's a fact. With that temper of yours, I kinda looked for you to get this whole outfit down on you; but the way you acted, I don't believe there's a man here, except Manuel, that's got any real grudge against you, even if they did lose a lot of money on the fight. And it's all the way you behaved, old boy--like a prince! Just--like a--blamed prince!"

"Oh, I don't know--Jose acted pretty white, himself. You've got to admit that it's Jose that took the fight out of the crowd. I'm glad--" He did not finish the sentence, and they were considerate enough not to insist that he should.

Warm sunlight, and bonfires fallen to cheerless, charred embers and ashes gone gray; warm sunlight, and eyes grown heavy with the weariness of surfeited pleasure. Bullock carts creaked again, their squealing growing gradually fainter as the fat-jowled senoras lurched home to the monotony of life, while the senoritas drowsed and dreamed, and smiled in their dreaming.

At the corrals, red-lidded caballeros cursed irritably the horses they saddled. In the patio Don Andres gave dignified adieu to the guests that still lingered. The harp was shrouded and dumb upon the platform, the oaken floor polished and dark with the night-long slide of slippered feet. The fiesta was slipping out of the present into the past, where it would live still under the rose-lights of memory.

There was a scurry of little feet in the rose-garden. A door slammed somewhere and hushed the sound of sobbing. A senorita--a young and lovely senorita who had all her life been given her way--fled to her room in a great rage, because for once her smiles had not thawed the ice which her anger had frozen.

The senorita flung something upon the floor and trampled it with her little slipper-heels; a rose, blood-red and withered, yet heavy with perfume still; a rose, twin to the one upon which the black horse of Jose had set his foot in the arena. A note she tore in little bits, with fingers that tingled still from the slap she had given to Diego, who had brought it. She flung the fragments from her, and the writing was fine and feminine in every curve--her own, if you wish to know; the note she had sent, twenty-four hours before, to her blue-eyed one whom she had decided to forgive.

"Santa Maria!" she gasped, and gritted her teeth afterwards. "This, then, is what he meant--that insolent one! 'After the fiesta will I send the answer'--so he told that simpering maid who took my letter and the rose. And the answer, then, is my rose and my letter returned, and no word else. Madre de Dios! That he should flout me thus! Now will I tell Jose to kill him--and kill him quickly. For that blue-eyed gringo I hate!" Then she flung herself across her bed and wept.

Let the tender-hearted be rea.s.sured. The senorita slid from sobbing into slumber, and her dreams were pleasant, so that she woke smiling. That night she sang a love-song to Jose, behind the pa.s.sion vines; and her eyes were soft; and when young Don Jose pulled her fingers from the guitar strings and kissed them many times, her only rebuke was such a pursing of lips that they were kissed also for their mutiny.

After awhile the senorita sang again, while Jose, his neck held a little to one side because of his hurt, watched her worshipfully, and forgot how much he had suffered because of her. She was seventeen, you see, and she was lovely to look upon; and as for a heart--perhaps she would develop one later.

CHAPTER XXV

ADIOS

The sun was sliding past the zenith when Jack yawned himself awake. He lay frowning at the ceiling as if he were trying to remember something, sat up when recollection came, and discovered that Dade was already up and getting into his jacket.

"Dade, let's go back to the mine," he suggested abruptly, reaching for his boots. "You aren't crazy about this job here, are you? I know you didn't want to take it, at first."

"And I know you bullied me into it," Dade retorted, with some acrimony.

He had danced until his feet burned with fatigue, and there was the reaction from a month of worry to roughen his mood. Also, he had yet to digest the amazing fact that the sight of Teresita had not hurt him so very much--not one quarter as much as he had expected it would do. Now, here was Jack proposing to leave, just when staying would be rather agreeable!

"Well--but times have changed, since then. I'm ready to go." Jack pulled on a boot and stamped his foot snugly into it. "What's more, I'm going!"

"You'll eat, first, won't you?"

Jack pa.s.sed over the sarcasm. "No, sir, I won't. I'm not going to swallow another mouthful on this ranch. I held myself down till that d.a.m.ned fiesta was over, because I didn't want folks to say I was scared off. But now--I'm going, just as quick as the Lord'll let me get a saddle on that yellow mustang."

"Why, you--"

"Why, I nothing! I'm going. If you want to go along, you can; but I won't drag you off by the heels. You can suit yourself." He stamped himself into the other boot, went over and splashed cold water into his eyes and upon his head, shook off the drops that clung to his hair, made a few violent pa.s.ses with towel and brush, and reached for his sombrero.

"It's a long ways to ride on an empty stomach," Dade reminded him dryly.