Gordon looked surprised. "Why, yes, on occasion. But you don't mean to
say--"
"Come on!" Sliver's manner was quite that of the "mysterious stranger"
of melodrama who demands absolute faith in those he is about to
befriend. It is feared, however, that both it and his thought, "It's a
fine chance to try him out," cloaked certain strong spirituous desires.
Quarter of an hour's heavy scrambling up and down rutted cattle tracks
brought them out in the _fonda_ dooryard. From above Gordon had noted
its golden walls nestling beside the stream in a bower of foliage. His
eyes now went, first to the two _ancianos_, a wrinkled old man and
woman, who dozed in the shade of the _ramada_; then to the girl who
knelt by the stream pounding her soiled linen on its smooth boulders.
Though he knew Spain only through pictures, the tinkling bells of a
mule-train going up the cañon added the last touch, vividly raised in
his mind the country inns of the Aragonian mountains. But for her darker
colors the girl with her shapely poundage might easily have been one of
their lusty daughters. She had risen at the sight of Sliver. With
unerring instinct she now walked inside, let down the wooden bar window,
and set out a bottle of _tequila_.
Through all, her big dusky eyes never left Gordon. With what would have
been brazenness in a white girl she studied him. But her gaze was wide
and curious as the stare of a deer, and caused him no offense. When
their eyes met, she smiled, but, unskilled in the ways of her kind, he
missed both its invitation and question till Sliver put it in words.
"She wants to know who you are an' all about you," he translated her
rapid Spanish, in which her small hands, satin arms and shoulders played
as large a part as her tongue. "She says her father an' mother are about
ready to cash in. If you'll stay here an' be her man, you'll stan' right
in line for the _fonda_."
It was sprung so suddenly, Gordon gasped. "Cash in?--the _fonda_? Say!
You're fooling?"