to one another in approval, like the arrant
gossips they were. The chill curtain fell straight and heavy again
before the door, so that the firelight shone dimly through its folds;
but not before Dade, riding at random save for the trust he put in the
sure homing instinct of his horse, caught the brief gleam of light and
sighed thankfully.

"We'll stop with old Manuel to-night," he announced cheerfully.
"Here's his cabin, just ahead."

"And who's old Manuel?" asked Jack petulantly, because of the pain in
his feet and his own unpleasant memories of that day.

"Don Andres Picardo's head vaquero. He camps here to keep an eye on
the cattle. Some fellows from town have been butchering them right
and left and doing a big business in beef, according to all accounts.
Manuel hates gringos like centipedes, but I happened to get on the
good side of him--partly because my Spanish is as good as his own. An
Americano who has black hair and can talk Spanish like the don himself
isn't an Americano, in Manuel's eyes."

While they were unsaddling under the oak tree, where the vaqueros kept
their riding gear in front of the cabin, Manuel himself came to the
door and stood squinting into the fog, while he flapped a tortilla
dexterously between his brown palms.

"Is it you, Valencia??" he called out in Spanish, giving the tortilla
a deft, whirling motion to even its edges.

Dade led the way into the zone of light, and Manuel stepped back with
a series of welcoming nods. His black eyes darted curiously to the
stranger, who, in Manuel's opinion, looked unpleasantly like a gringo,
with his coppery hair waving crisply under his sombrero, and his
eyes that were blue as the bay over there to the east. But when Dade
introduced him, Jack greeted his squat host with a smile that was
disarming in its boyish good humor, and with language as liquidly
Spanish as Manuel's best Castilian, which he reserved for his talks
with the patron on the porch when the senora and the young senorita
were by.

The distrust left Manuel's eyes as he trotted across the hard-trodden
dirt floor and laid the tortilla carefully upon a hot rock, where
three others crisped and curled their edges in delectable promise of
future toothsomeness.

He stood up and turned to Dade amiably, his knuckles pressing lightly
upon his hips that his palms might be saved immaculate for the next
little corn cake which he would presently slap into thin symmetry.

"Madre de Dios!" he