er
jaunty turban quiver.

"My fawther here's a temperance man, a prohibitionist: he don't believe
in wine; he hates it; he wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. That
felluh Barden knowed it--didn't he, pappy? He lied!" She spoke fiercely,
catching her breath between her sentences.

The Mexican threw away the end of his cigarette, and gazed after it with
pensive regret.

"Some folks don' lak wahn," he said amiably. "Ah lak it var' well
mahse'f. Ah gass he al's tell var' big lies, Mist' Barrd'n."

The girl turned away, still grasping her father's arm. Then she came
back, with a sudden and somewhat bewildering accession of civility.
"Addyoce," she said, bowing loftily toward the senora. The plume in her
hat had turned in the afternoon breeze, and curved forward, giving her a
slightly martial aspect.

"Addyoce, Mr. Gonsallies. We're much obliged,--ain't we, pappy?
Addyoce."

Ricardo touched his sombrero. "Good-evenin', mees," he said in his
soft, leisurely voice; "good-evenin', senor."

When the last ruffle of Miss Starkweather's green "polonay" had
disappeared around the corner of the adobe house, the senora drifted
slowly across the dooryard in her voluminous pink drapery, and sat down
beside her son. There was a thin stratum of curiosity away down in her
Latin soul. What had Ricardo done to make the senorita so very angry?
She was angry, was she not?

Oh, yes, she was very angry, but Ricardo had done nothing. Senor Barden
had sold her father ten acres of wine-grapes, and the old man did not
like wine; he liked raisins. Santa Maria! Did he mean to eat ten acres
of raisins? He need not drink his wine; he could sell it. But the
senorita was very angry; she would probably kill Senor Barden. She had
said she would kill him with a very long pole--ten feet. Ricardo would
not care much if she did. Senor Barden had called him a greaser. But as
for a man who did not like wine--caramba!

II.

Parker Lowe's government claim was a fractional section, triangular in
shape, with its base on the grant line of Rancho la Laguna, and its apex
high up on the mountain-side. Parker's cabin was perched upon the
highest point, at the mouth of the canon, in a patch of unconquerable
boulders. Other government settlers were wont to remark the remoteness
of his residence from the tillable part of his claim, but Parker
remained loyal to his own fireside.

"It's a sightly place," he asserted, "and nigh to the water, and it
ain't no