half incoherently. "Ah, yes! It had come to this. It seems he was not
a vacquero, a companion of the padrone on lands that had been his own
before the Americanos robbed him of it, but a servant, a lackey of
muchachas, an attendant on children to amuse them, or--why not?--an
appendage to his daughter's state! Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such a
muchacha! A picked-up foundling--a swineherd's daughter--to be
ennobled by his, Pedro's, attendance, and for whose vulgar, clownish
tricks,--tricks of a swineherd's daughter,--he, Pedro, was to be brought
to book and insulted as if she were of Hidalgo blood! Ah, Caramba! Don
Juan Peyton would find he could no more make a servant of him than he
could make a lady of her!"

The two young girls were rapidly approaching. Judge Peyton spurred his
horse beside the vacquero's, and, swinging the long thong of his bridle
ominously in his clenched fingers, said, with a white face:--

"Vamos!"

Pedro's hand slid towards his sash. Peyton only looked at him with a
rigid smile of scorn.

"Or I'll lash you here before them both," he added in a lower voice.

The vacquero met Peyton's relentless eyes with a yellow flash of hate,
drew his reins sharply, until his mustang, galled by the cruel bit,
reared suddenly as if to strike at the immovable American, then,
apparently with the same action, he swung it around on its hind legs, as
on a pivot, and dashed towards the corral at a furious gallop.

CHAPTER III.

Meantime the heroic proprietor of the peaceful ox-team, whose valor
Incarnacion had so infelicitously celebrated, was walking listlessly in
the dust beside his wagon. At a first glance his slouching figure, taken
in connection with his bucolic conveyance, did not immediately suggest
a hero. As he emerged from the dusty cloud it could be seen that he was
wearing a belt from which a large dragoon revolver and hunting knife
were slung, and placed somewhat ostentatiously across the wagon seat
was a rifle. Yet the other contents of the wagon were of a singularly
inoffensive character, and even suggested articles of homely barter.
Culinary utensils of all sizes, tubs, scullery brushes, and clocks, with
several rolls of cheap carpeting and calico, might have been the wares
of some traveling vender. Yet, as they were only visible through a flap
of the drawn curtains of the canvas hood, they did not mitigate the
general aggressive effect of their owner's appearance. A red bandanna
han