the desert. Incuriously his eyes
watched the party as it moved toward the headquarters of Pasquale. Some
impulse led him to put his scarecrow of a pony at a canter.

The party reached the house of Pasquale and the two leaders dismounted.
Yeager was still at some distance, but he had an uncertain impression
that one of them was a woman. They stood on the porch talking. The
larger one seemed to be overruling the protest of the other, so far as
Steve could tell at that distance. The two passed together into the
house.

It was not at all unusual for women to go into that house, according to
the camp-fire stories that were whispered in the army. Pasquale was an
unmoral old barbarian. If he liked women and wine the Legion made no
complaint. The women were either camp-followers or visitors from the
nearest town. In either case they were not of a sort whose reputation
was likely to suffer.

Yeager cooked his simple supper and ate it. He sat down with his back to
an adobe wall and rolled a cigarette. The peons, loafing in the cool of
the evening, naturally fell into gossip. Steve, intent on his own
thoughts, did not hear what was said until a word snatched him out of
his indifference. The word was the name of Harrison.

"This afternoon?" asked one.

"Not an hour ago."

"Brought a woman with him, Pablo says," said a third indifferently.

"Yes." The first speaker laughed with an implication he did not care to
express.

One of the others leaned forward and spoke in a lower tone. "This
Harrison promised the general to bring back with him the Gringo Yeager.
Old Gabriel is crazy to get the Yankee devil in his hands. Not so?
Harrison brings him a woman instead to soften his bad temper, maybe."

The American gave no sign of interest. His fingers finished rolling the
cigarette. Not another muscle of the inert body moved.

"A white woman this time, Pablo says."

The first speaker shrugged. "Look you, brother. All is grist that comes
to the mill of Gabriel. As for these Gringo women"--He whispered a bit
of slander that brought the blood to the face of Steve.

The peons guffawed with delight. This kind of joke was adapted both to
their prejudices and their lack of intelligence. They were as ignorant
of the world as children, fully as gay, irresponsible, and kindhearted.
But they had, too, a capacity for cruelty and frank sensuousness that
belongs only to the childhood of a race.

Presently Yeager arose, yawned, and drifted