rinned Jack,
and went to examine the riata. Those two trips had accomplished much
towards making it a pliable, live thing in the hands of one skilled to
direct its snaky dartings here and there, wherever one willed it to go.
Many trips it would require before the riata was perfect, and then--

"The senor is early at his prayers," observed a soft, mocking voice
behind him.

Jack dropped the riata and turned, his whole face smiling a welcome. But
Teresita was in one of her perverse moods and the mockery was not all in
her voice; her eyes were maddeningly full of it as she looked from him
to the stretched riata.

"The senor is wise to tell the twists in his riata as I tell my beads--a
prayer for each," she cooed. "For truly he will need the prayers, and a
riata that will perform miracles of its own accord, if he would fight
Jose with rawhide." There was the little twist of her lips afterward
which Jack had come to know well and to recognize as a bull recognizes
the red serape of the matador.

"Senor," she added impressively, holding back her hair from blowing
across her face and gazing at him wide-eyed, with a wicked assumption of
guileless innocence, "at the Mission San Jose there is a very old and
very wise woman. She lives in a tule hut behind the very walls of the
Mission, and the Indians go to her by night when dreams have warned them
that death threatens. She is a terribly wise old woman, Senor, for she
can look into the past and part the curtain which hides the future. For
gold will she part it. And for gold will she put the curse or the
blessing where curse or blessing is needed most. Go you to the old woman
and have her put a blessing upon the riata when it is dressed and you
have prayed your prayers upon it, Senor! For five pesos will she bless
it and command it to fly straight wherever the senor desires that it
shall fly. Then can you meet Jose and not tremble so that the spur-bells
tinkle."

Jack went hot inside of him, but he made his lips smile at the jest; for
so do brave men try to make light of torment, whether it be fire or
flood or the tongue of the woman they love.

"All right," he said. "And I think I'll have the judges rule that the
fight shall be at fifty paces, as I would if we were to fight with
pistols." He tried to keep his irritation out of his voice, but there
must have been enough to betray him.

For Teresita smiled pleasedly and sent another barb. "It would be wise.
For truly, Jose's