in Tucson, and once attended a masquerade, where for nearly
an hour he had enjoyed the partnership of and been tantalized by a maid
of just about the stature of this dark-eyed "daughter of my brother."
Blake knew as well as does the reader that this was no time for
philandering, and had been told, but not yet taught, the wisdom of
keeping well away from the damsels who, like the sirens of old, twanged
the vibrating strings and sang their luring songs. Why should she have
flung herself between him and the desperadoes at that perilous moment
and thrown her arms around him unless--unless she was the girl he had
been making love to, in broken Spanish, during the _fiesta_ at Tucson?
He would not have let Loring know where he was going, or why, for a good
deal. But once away from him, Blake was alone with no one to interpose
objection, and--he went. In three minutes he had made his cautious way
to the westward willows, and his heart began beating in spite of his
determination to be guarded and even suspicious, for there sat the
little senorita alone. That fact in itself should have opened his eyes,
and would have done so a year or two later, but Blake was still a good
deal of a boy, and in another moment he stepped quickly to her side and
almost swept the ground with his broad-brimmed scouting hat, as he bowed
low before her. Instantly the song ceased, the guitar dropped with an
aeolian whine upon the sand, and as Blake stooped to raise it she sprang
to her feet--a half-stifled cry upon her lips. With smiling
self-assurance he bowed low again as he would have restored the
instrument to the little hands that were half-upraised as though to warn
him back; but she began coyly retreating from the bench on which she had
been seated, and he quickly followed, murmuring protest and reassurance
in such Spanish as he could command, declaring he had never yet had
opportunity to thank her for a deed of daring that perhaps had saved his
life (he knew it hadn't--the long-legged, nimble-tongued reprobate), and
trembling, timorous, sweetly hesitant she lingered; she even let him
seize her hand and only faintly strove to draw it away. She began even
to listen to his pleading. She shyly hung her pretty head and coyly
turned away and furtively peeped across the starlit level toward the
ranch, where two dark forms serape-shrouded, were lurking at the corner
of the corral. They had come crouching forward a dozen yards when
something, some sudden s