time!" taunted Ellhorn.

Halliday turned back a red and angry face: "I'll have him," he yelled,
"if I have to kill the whole damned three of you to get him!"

A derisive shout of laughter was the only answer he received as he and
his party galloped back to camp.

CHAPTER XI

After the round-up was finished Emerson Mead and his two friends
started, with two _vaqueros_, to drive a band of cattle to Las Plumas
for shipment. When they reached Juan Garcia's ranch Mead remembered
that he wished to see the old Mexican, and the two cow-boys were sent
on with the cattle while he and Tuttle and Ellhorn tied their horses
in the shade of the cottonwoods at the foot of the hill. They found
Amada Garcia leaning on her folded arms across the window-sill and
making a picture in the frame of the gray adobe walls that was very
good to see.

It is not often that the senorita of the southwest can lay claim to
any more of beauty than glows in midnight hair and eyes. But Amada
Garcia was one of the favored few. Her short, plump figure was rounded
into dainty curves and her oval face, with its smooth, brown skin, its
dimples, its regular features, its little, rosebud, pouting mouth, and
its soft, black, heavy-lidded eyes, was alluring with sensuous beauty.
A red handkerchief tied into a saucy cap was perched on her shining,
black hair, and her black dress, carelessly open a little at the neck,
showed a full, soft, brown throat.

She received the three men with that dignified courtesy that is never
forgotten in the humblest Mexican adobe hut, but she tempered its
gravity with many coquettish glances of her great black eyes. They
talked in Spanish, the only language Amada knew, which the men spoke
as readily as they did their own. No, her father was not at home, she
said. He had gone to Muletown and would not be back until night. But
was it the wish of the senores to be seated and rest themselves from
their travel and refresh themselves with a drink of cool water? Mead
presented Tuttle, who had never seen the girl before, and Amada said,
with many flashes of languorous light from under her heavy lids, ah,
she had heard of the senor, a most brave _caballero_, a man whom all
women must admire, so brave and skillful. Her carriage and the poise
of her body as she stood, or sat down, or walked about the room, would
have befitted a queen's approach to her throne, so unconsciously regal
and graceful were they. For ever since she was ol