"My _amigos_?"

"You have received and repaid their visits. But listen! It is not that I would set bounds for your freedom, but if you had stood, as I have, on a street corner in Ciudad, Mexico, and had heard the gringo tourists pa.s.s comments on our women--_Dios_! I choke at the thought! If you but realized their c.o.xcombry, conceit, the contempt in which they hold us--"

She had flushed slightly, but with a toss of her head she broke in: "It is not necessary. I have heard young Mexican men comment on both our own and American women. If the gringos can teach them any lessons--"

"Apes!" he burst angrily in. "Fools! The degenerate apes who put on the vices of civilization with its collars!"

"Perhaps. But, even so, it makes for the same point--there are gringos and gringos just as we have Mexicans _and_ Mexicans."

"And these, of course, are the other sort?"

"Exactly!" She robbed his sarcasm by her quiet. "If one judges, as one must, by their behavior. I am pleased to find you, for once, of my opinion."

"Of your opinion?" He regarded her with sudden sternness. "That is, to be friends with these men who have forced themselves in on your lands?

I had never expected to hear it fall from the lips of a Garcia. Now listen! What if your people did wound this man? Is he the first? Will he be the last?" His face darkening under a rush of blood, he continued: "I had thought this pair would soon ruin themselves as did the other fools before them. But since they are working on a surer plan--"

"What do you mean?" She searched his face.

"So anxious?" he laughed bitterly. "What is it to you?"

"Only that I would not have them murdered."

"And would they be the first? Is there a foot of Mexican soil which has not been soaked with good Mexican blood that you should be so careful for a gringo?" Slanting through an opening in the trees overhead the sun shone on his face, transforming it into a red mask of hate. "As yet no one of them has secured himself in the Barranca de Guerrero! So long as a Rocha is left to do the duty that belongs to the Garcias no one of them ever will."

But now he had touched another string, and, straightening in her saddle, she gave him look for look. "When the Garcias need the Rochas to settle their quarrels it will be time for you to interfere. I should not advise you to speak thus to my uncle."

Nevertheless she flinched a little at his answer. "That is my intention--this very night."

With that they rode on, in silence for a while, then speaking of other things. But when he left her in the upper courtyard an hour later she stood at her door, listening apprehensively to the jingle of his spurs along the gallery. When he took a chair beside Don Luis, who sat there smoking, she listened for a while. Then, flushing suddenly, she hastily went in.

If she had remained there was nothing to hear, for during many minutes the conversation ran altogether on the herds as they came winding in from distant pastures to the corrals in the square. Night had reduced everything to a dark blur before Sebastien commented on a yellow twinkle high up on the Barranca wall.

"That will be the gringos' light at Santa Gertrudis." After a long pause, "It is now a month past since they came, and--they are still here."

Don Luis flicked the ash from his cigar. "What hurry?"

"But this new business? The smelter you spoke of the other day."

"_Si_, the smelter?"

Sebastien gave his own interpretation to the other's slow tone. "Then there is something forward?"

"What need? The gringo at the station tells me they have no money. A single mistake and they are done." After a sententious pause he added, "It is the part of youth to make mistakes."

The dusk did not conceal the other's impatience. "But why this tender care? Are they so different from the others? A word from thee and--"

"Yes, yes, a nod and it would have been done long ago. There speaks young blood--the hot blood that lost us Texas and Alta California. These lads are of good family, Sebastien, and there can be no disappearance without inquiry. Their death would be but one more thorn in the side of the rabid beast that requires small urging to devour us. No, let them make their own end."

"And Francesca? Is she to have the run of their camp?"

Don Luis's deep laugh rumbled through the courtyard. "At last from a long cast we come to the quarry. Francesca? She is a wild filly, the despair of every staid tabby in the countryside. Long ago I discovered that the one way to manage her was to let her have her head. Nor will it be the part of wisdom for thee to interfere."

"Neither would I try--yet. Commands are for husbands; lovers must wait.

That which I propose she will never know. It is--" Answering the other's interrogative look, he leaned over, whispering in rapid Spanish.

Don Luis emitted an amused chuckle. "Sebastien, thou art truly a devil.

Had thy father possessed but the half of thy wit, some things had gone different in the last war. Yes, feet that are still spoiling good sod would now be rotten bones." After a pause he went on: "It seems a scurvy trick, yet it depends on the men themselves. But--if they rise not at the bait?"

"If?" Sebastien repeated it with bitter scorn. "Was there ever a gringo that would not bite at such? They are kind as goats. I ask only that you go there with Francesca at the close of the week."

"And thou?"

"I shall go there to-morrow."

CHAPTER IX

Living in the letter of his intention, Sebastien was up next morning and had covered ten miles of the trail before the sun rose over the Barranca wall. Early as it was, however, others were already abroad. The sudden increase in his family had obliged Seyd to make a journey out to the railroad for more provisions, and when Sebastien paused to breathe his beast halfway up the grade to the bench, a good gla.s.s would have shown him Light and Peace gingerly picking their way along the trail that had been built by Don Luis's orders around the slide on the opposite wall.

As usual, Sebastien's approach was announced by the ring of hoofs, but, imagining it to be some charcoal-burner, Billy, who was already at his bricks, did not look up till warned by Caliban's stealthy hiss. In his surprise he forgot to reply to Sebastien's greeting, and simply answered the other's question.

"Don Roberto? He is not here?"

"No, gone out to the railroad. Won't be back for three days."

"_Caramba!_ After I had climbed these heights to see him!" Though his eyebrows and hands both testified to Sebastien's disappointment, a sharper eye than Billy's might have discerned the underlying satisfaction. Moreover, if he appeared merely inquisitively friendly during the hour he stayed to chat, not one minute was wasted. From the first question to his final comment on Billy's work, "You gringos are certainly a wonderful people," all was directed to one end.

"Yes, we usually get there," Billy modestly admitted, and his next words paved a lovely road for Sebastien to come to his purpose. "The building would go faster if I hadn't so many things to do. After laying bricks all day I have to turn in and cook, and, though it's pretty tough, there doesn't seem to be any way out of it. We tried both of the peons at the cooking and nearly died of the hash they served up."

"Tut! tut!" Sebastien was there with ready sympathy. "This is too bad.

Soon you will be completely worn out." After a pause, during which he may be imagined as taking Billy's mental temperature, he said: "_Bueno!_ I have it! I shall send you a cook--one than whom there is no finer in all this country."

If he had harbored any suspicions, Billy's beaming smile now wiped them out. "That's awfully good of you. Seyd will be ever so glad. When can we expect your cook?"

"To-morrow afternoon." Scenting hospitality in Billy's glance toward the hut, Sebastien hastily added, "That is, if I reach home to-night--to do which I shall have to be going." And refusing the offer of lunch which justified his premonition, he rode away, leaving Billy puffed up with pride.

"I rather think I turned that trick well," he congratulated himself.

"Seyd couldn't have done it a bit better." Occasional fat chuckles emitted during the afternoon testified to his increasing opinion of his own diplomacy. But his rising pride did not attain its meridian until, midway of the following afternoon, a pretty brown girl came driving a burro up the trail.

Having antic.i.p.ated a man cook, it required five minutes of vehement Spanish, helped out by a wealth of gesticulation, to convince Billy that the girl was not an estray from a neighboring hamlet, and while her dark eyes, white teeth, and shapely brown arms were engaged in explanation they wrought other work. By the time Billy was finally able to understand the fact he was hardly in condition to pa.s.s upon it.

It is only right to state that he had little time for reflection, for from the very beginning the girl took the direction of affairs into her own hands. Driving her burro over to the stable she unpacked a stone _metate_, or grinding-stone, a pestle, and a quant.i.ty of soaked corn.

She turned the beast out to graze, then dropped at once on her knees and began grinding paste for the supper tortillas, or cakes. When, toward evening, Billy dropped in for a drink he found her mantle spread on his bed and certain articles of feminine wear depending from the nails which had hitherto been sacred to his own clothing.

Blushing furiously, he went out--without the drink. But, though his colors would have done credit to a girl, they were not to be weighed in the same balance with the green peppers stuffed with minced beef that she served at supper with the tortillas. While eating with an appet.i.te born of a protracted canned diet it is to be feared that he fed just as ravenously on the atmosphere shed by her luxurious presence. When, after supper, he sat in the doorway and watched the blood-reds of the sunset flow through the valley he might, with his fiery stubble, have pa.s.sed for some ancient Celt at the mouth of his cave. Not until he caught a second glimpse of the mantle while stealing a look at the girl washing up dishes did he return to his usual bashful self. Slipping quietly inside, he gathered up the blankets off Seyd's bed and carried them out to make his own couch under a tree.