The Gringos. B. M. Bower
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a finger before he spread his hands to show how completely he failed to understand. "But if the caballo does not please the señor, why then did the señor steal—"
"You see, I wanted to bring my partner—Señor Jack Allen—down here with me. And he was riding the caballo, and he couldn't get off—"
Manuel swore a Spanish oath politely, to please his guest who wished to amaze him.
"Because he was tied on." Dade failed just there to keep a betraying hardness out of his voice. "The Viligantes were—going to—hang him." The last two words were cut short off with the click of his jaws coming together.
Manuel thereupon swore more sincerely and spilled beans from his tortilla scoop. He knew the ways of the Committee. Four months ago—when the Committee was newer and more just—they had hanged the third cousin of his half-sister's husband. It is true, the man had killed a woman with a knife; yet Manuel's black beard bristled when he thought of the affront to his hypothetical kinship.
"I had to take the two together," Dade explained, trying with better success to speak lightly. "And now, if I turn the buckskin loose, he may go back—and he may not. I was wondering—"
Manuel cut him short. "To-morrow I ride to town," he said. "I will take the caballo back with me, if that pleases the señors. I will turn him loose near the Mission, and he will go to his stable.
"The señor," he added, "was very brave. Madre de Dios! To run away with a prisoner of the Vigilantes! But they will surely kill the señor for that; the taking of the horse, that is nothing." His teeth shone briefly under his black mustache. "One can die but once," he pointed out, and emphasized his meaning by a swift glance at Jack, moodily nibbling the edge of a corn cake. "But if the horse does not please the señor—"
Dade caught his meaning and laughed a little over it. "The horse," he said, "belongs to the Committee; my friend does not."
"Sí, Señor—but surely that is true. Only—" he stroked his crisp beard thoughtfully—"the señors would better go to-morrow to the patron. There the gringos dare not come. In this poor hut the señors may not be safe—for we are but three poor vaqueros when all are here. We will do our best—"
"Three vaqueros," declared Dade with fine diplomacy, "as brave as the three who live here, would equal twenty of the Committee. But we will not let it come to that."
Manuel took the flattery with a glimpse of white teeth and a deprecatory wave of the hand, and himself qualified it modestly afterward.
"With the knife—perhaps. But the gringos have guns which speak fast. Still, we would do our best—"
"Say, if he's going back to town to-morrow," spake Jack suddenly, from where he reclined in the shadow "why can't I write a note to Bill Wilson and have him send down my guns? The Captain took them away, you know; but he won't object to giving them back now!" His voice was bitter.
"The rest of them might. You seem to think that when you killed Perkins you wiped out the whole delegation—which you didn't. What was the row about; if you don't mind telling me?"
"I thought you knew," said Jack quite sincerely, which proved more than anything how absorbed he was in his own part in the affair. He shifted his head upon his clasped hands so that his eyes might rest upon the waning firelight, where the pot of frijoles, set back from supper, was still steaming languidly in the hot ashes.
"You started it yourself, two weeks ago," he announced whimsically, to lighten a little the somber tale. "If you hadn't bought that white horse from that drunken Spaniard, I'd be holding a handful of aces and kings to-night, most likely, in Bill Wilson's place. And my legs wouldn't be aching like the devil," he added, reminded anew of his troubles, when he shifted his position. "It's all your fault, bought the horse."
Dade grinned and bent to hold a twig in the coals, that he might light a cigarette. "All right, I'm the guilty party. Let's have the consequences of my evil deed," he advised, settling back on his heels and lowering an eyelid at Manuel in behalf of this humorous partner of his.
"You bought the horse and broke the Spaniard's heart and ruined his temper. And he and Sandy had a fight, and—So," he went on, after a two-minute break in the argument, "when I heard Swift sneering something about Sandy, last night, I rose up in meeting and told him and some others what I thought of 'em. I was not," he explained, "thinking nice thoughts at the time. You see, Perkins, since he got the lead, has gathered a mighty scaly bunch around him, and they've been running things to suit themselves.
"Then, Swift and two or three others held up a boy from the mines to-day, and I happened to see it. I interfered; fact is, I killed a couple of them. So they arrested both of us, went through a farce trial, and were trying to hurry me into Kingdom Come before Bill Wilson got a rescue party together, when you come along. That's all. They let the kid go—which was a good thing. I don't think they'll be down here after me. In fact, I've been thinking maybe I'd go back, in a day or so, and have it out with them."
"Yes, that's about what you'd be thinking, all right," retorted Dade unemotionally. "Sounds perfectly natural." The tone of him, being unsympathetic, precipitated an argument which flung crisp English sentences back and forth across the cabin. Manuel, when the words grew strange and took on a harsh tang which to his ear meant anger, diplomatically sought his blankets and merged into the shadow of the corner farthest from the fire and nearest the door. The señors were pleased to disagree; if they fought, he had but to dodge out into the night and neutrality. The duties of hospitality weighed hard upon Manuel during that half-hour or so.
Dade's cigarette stub, flung violently into the heart of the fire glow, seemed to Manuel a crucial point in the quarrel; he slipped back the blankets, ready to retreat at the first lunge of open warfare. He breathed relief, however, when Dade got up and stretched his arms to the dried tules overhead, and laughed a lazy surrender of the argument, if not of his opinion upon the subject.
"You're surely the most ambitious trouble-hunter I ever saw," he said, returning to his habitual humorous drawl, with the twinkle in his eyes that went with it. "Just the same, we'll not go back to the mine just yet. Till the dust settles, we're both better off down here with Don Andres Picardo. I don't want to be hung for the company I keep. Besides—"
"I'll bet ten ounces there's a señorita," hazarded. Jack maliciously. "You're like Bill Wilson; but you can preach caution till your jaws ache; you can't fool me into believing you're afraid to go back to the mine. Is there a señorita?"
"You shut up and go to sleep," snapped Dade, and afterward would not speak at all.
Manuel, in the shadow, frowned over the only words he understood—Don Andres Picardo and señorita. The señors were agreeable companions, and they were his guests. But they were gringos, after all. And if they should presume to lift desireful eyes to the little Señorita Teresa—Teresita, they called her fondly who knew her—Manuel's mustache lifted suddenly at one side at the bare possibility.
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