ingly
than Ignacio Chavez? After a little he would pluck some of the newly
opened yellow rosebuds for her, making her a little speech about
herself and budding flowers. He would even, perhaps, show her his
bells, let her hear just the suspicion of a note from each. . . .

A sharp sound came to her abruptly out of the utter stillness but meant
nothing to her. She saw a flock of pigeons rise above the roofs of the
more distant houses, circle, swerve, and disappear beyond the
cottonwoods. She noted that Ignacio was no longer leaning lazily
against the wall; he had stiffened, his mouth was a little open,
breathless, his attitude that of one listening expectantly, his eyes
squinting as they had been just now when he fronted the sun. Then came
the second sound, a repetition of the first, sharp, in some way
sinister. Then another and another and another, until she lost count;
a man's voice crying out strangely, muffled. Indistinct, seeming to
come from afar.

It was an incongruous, almost a humorous, thing to see the sun-warmed
passivity of Ignacio Chavez metamorphosed in a flash into activity. He
muttered something, leaped away from the Mission wall, dashed through
the tangle of the garden, and raced like a madman to the eastern arch.
With both hands he grasped the dangling bell-ropes, with all of his
might he set them clanging and shouting and clamoring until the
reverberation smote her ears and set the blood tingling strangely
through her. She had seen the look upon his face. . . .

Suddenly she knew that those little sharp sounds had been the rattle of
pistol-shots. She sprang to her feet, her eyes widening. Now all was
quiet save for the boom and roar of the bells. The pigeons were
circling high in the clear sky, were coming back. . . . She went
quickly the way Ignacio had gone, calling out to him:

"What is it?"

He seemed all unmoved now as he made his bells cry out for him; it was
for him to be calm while they trembled with the event which surely they
must understand.

"It is a man dead," he told her as his right hand called upon the
Captain for a volume of sound from his bronze throat. "You will see.
And there will be more work for Roderico Nortone!" He sighed and shook
his head, and for a moment spoke softly with his jangling bells. "And
some day," he continued quietly, "it will be Roderico's time, _no_?
And I will ring the bells for him, and the Captain and the Dancer and
Lolita, they will al