cell just vacated by them, Frances and he accompanied Gabilonda to
the secret room behind the corridor wall.

All three parties to the introduction that followed acknowledged
secretly to a surprise. Miss Carmencita had expected the friend of big,
rough, homely O'Halloran to resemble him in kind, at least. Instead, she
looked on a bronzed young Apollo of the saddle with something of that
same lithe grace she knew and loved in Juan Valdez. And the shy boy
beside him--why, the darling was sweet enough to kiss. The big, brown,
helpless eyes, the blushing, soft cheeks, the crop of thick, light curls
were details of an extraordinarily taking picture. Really, if these
two were fair specimens, Americans were not so bad, after all. Which
conclusion Juan Valdez's fondness for that race may have helped in part
to form.

But if the young Spanish girl found a little current of pleasure in her
surprise, Bucky and his friend were aware of the same sensation. All
the charm of her race seemed summed up in Carmencita Megales. She was
of blue blood, every feature and motion told that. The fine, easy set
of her head, the fire in the dark, heavy-lashed eyes, the sweep of dusky
chin and cheek and throat certified the same story. She had, too, that
coquettish hint of uncertainty, that charm of mystery so fatal in
its lure to questing man. Even physically the contradiction of sex
attracted. Slender and lissom as a fawn, she was yet a creature of
exquisitely rounded curves. Were her eyes brown or black or--in the
sunlight--touched with a gleam of copper? There was always uncertainty.
But much more was there fire, a quality that seemed to flash out from
her inner self. She was a child of whims, a victim of her moods. Yet in
her, too, was a passionate loyalty that made fickleness impossible. She
knew how to love and how to hate, and, despite her impulses, was capable
of surrender complete and irrevocable.

All of this Bucky did not read in that first moment of meeting, but the
shrewd judgment behind the level blue eyes came to an appraisal roughly
just. Before she had spoken three sentences he knew she had all her
sex's reputed capacity for injustice as well as its characteristic
flashes of generosity.

"Are you one of the men who have rebelled against my father and
attempted to murder him?" she flashed.

"I'm the man he condemned to be hanged tomorrow morning at dawn for
helping Juan Valdez take the guns," retorted Bucky, with a laugh.