w, with that infernal half-broken mustang? Do
you usually charge the casa at that speed?"

"Pardon, my leetle brother! But here you shall slip up. The mustang is
not HALF-broken; he is not broke at all! Look at his hoof--never have
a shoe been there. For myself--attend me! When I ride alone, I
think mooch; when I think mooch I think fast; my idea he go like a
cannon-ball! Consequent, if I ride not thees horse like the cannon-ball,
my thought HE arrive first, and where are you? You get left! Believe
me that I fly thees horse, thees old Mexican plug, and your de' uncle
'Ennery and his leetle old idea arrive all the same time, and on the
instant."

It WAS the old Enriquez! I perfectly understood his extravagant speech
and illustration, and yet for the first time I wondered if others did.

"Tak'-a-drink!" he said, all in one word. "You shall possess the old
Bourbon or the rhum from the Santa Cruz! Name your poison, gentlemen!"

He had already dragged me up the steps from the patio to the veranda,
and seated me before a small round table still covered with the
chocolate equipage of the morning. A little dried-up old Indian woman
took it away, and brought the spirits and glasses.

"Mirar the leetle old one!" said Enriquez, with unflinching gravity.
"Consider her, Pancho, to the bloosh! She is not truly an Aztec, but
she is of years one hundred and one, and LIFS! Possibly she haf not the
beauty which ravishes, which devastates. But she shall attent you to the
hot water, to the bath. Thus shall you be protect, my leetle brother,
from scandal."

"Enriquez," I burst out suddenly, "tell me about yourself. Why did you
leave the El Bolero board? What was the row about?"

Enriquez's eyes for a moment glittered; then they danced as before.

"Ah," he said, "you have heard?"

"Something; but I want to know the truth from you."

He lighted a cigarette, lifted himself backward into a grass hammock, on
which he sat, swinging his feet. Then, pointing to another hammock, he
said: "Tranquillize yourself there. I will relate; but, truly, it ees
nothing."

He took a long pull at his cigarette, and for a few moments
seemed quietly to exude smoke from his eyes, ears, nose, even his
finger-ends--everywhere, in fact, but his mouth. That and his mustache
remained fixed. Then he said slowly, flicking away the ashes with his
little finger:--

"First you understand, friend Pancho, that I make no row. The other
themself make the row, the