Meantime the heroic proprietor of the peaceful ox-team, whose valor
Incarnacion had so infelicitously celebrated, was walking listlessly in
the dust beside his wagon. At a first glance his slouching figure, taken
in connection with his bucolic conveyance, did not immediately suggest
a hero. As he emerged from the dusty cloud it could be seen that he was
wearing a belt from which a large dragoon revolver and hunting knife
were slung, and placed somewhat ostentatiously across the wagon seat
was a rifle. Yet the other contents of the wagon were of a singularly
inoffensive character, and even suggested articles of homely barter.
Culinary utensils of all sizes, tubs, scullery brushes, and clocks, with
several rolls of cheap carpeting and calico, might have been the wares
of some traveling vender. Yet, as they were only visible through a flap
of the drawn curtains of the canvas hood, they did not mitigate the
general aggressive effect of their owner's appearance. A red bandanna
handkerchief knotted and thrown loosely over his shoulders, a slouched
hat pulled darkly over a head of long tangled hair, which, however,
shadowed a round, comfortable face, scantily and youthfully bearded,
were part of these confusing inconsistencies.
The shadows of the team wagon were already lengthening grotesquely over
the flat, cultivated fields, which for some time had taken the place of
the plains of wild oats in the branch road into which they had turned.
The gigantic shadow of the proprietor, occasionally projected before it,
was in characteristic exaggeration, and was often obliterated by a puff
of dust, stirred by the plodding hoofs of the peaceful oxen, and swept
across the field by the strong afternoon trades. The sun sank lower,
although a still potent presence above the horizon line; the creaking
wagon lumbered still heavily along. Yet at intervals its belligerent
proprietor would start up from his slouching, silent march, break out
into violent, disproportionate, but utterly ineffective objurgation
of his cattle, jump into the air and kick his heels together in some
paroxysm of indignation against them,--an act, however, which was
received always with heavy bovine indifference, the dogged scorn of
swaying, repudiating heads, or the dull contempt of lazily flicking
tails.
Towards sunset one or two straggling barns and cottages indicated their
approach to the outskirts of a country town or settlement. Here the team
halted, as if the belligerent-looking teamster had felt his appearance
was inconsistent with an effeminate civilization, and the oxen were
turned into an open waste opposite a nondescript wooden tenement, half
farmhouse and half cabin, evidently of the rudest Western origin. He may
have recognized the fact that these “shanties” were not, as the ordinary
traveler might infer, the first rude shelter of the original pioneers
or settlers, but the later makeshifts of some recent Western immigrants
who, like himself, probably found themselves unequal to the settled
habits of the village, and who still retained their nomadic instincts.
It chanced, however, that the cabin at present was occupied by a New
England mechanic and his family, who had emigrated by ship around Cape
Horn, and who had no experience of the West, the plains, or its people.
It was therefore with some curiosity and a certain amount of fascinated
awe that the mechanic's only daughter regarded from the open door of her
dwelling the arrival of this wild and lawless-looking stranger.
Meantime he had opened the curtains of the wagon and taken from its
interior a number of pots, pans, and culinary utensils, which he
proceeded to hang upon certain hooks that were placed on the outer ribs
of the board and the sides of the vehicle. To this he added a roll of
rag carpet, the end of which hung from the tailboard, and a roll of pink
calico temptingly displayed on the seat. The mystification and curiosity
of the young girl grew more intense at these proceedings. It looked
like the ordinary exhibition of a traveling peddler, but the gloomy
and embattled appearance of the man himself scouted so peaceful and
commonplace a suggestion. Under the pretense of chasing away a marauding
hen, she sallied out upon the waste near the wagon. It then became
evident that the traveler had seen her, and was not averse to her
interest in his movements, although he had not changed his attitude of
savage retrospection. An occasional ejaculation of suppressed passion,
as if the memory of some past conflict was too much for him, escaped him
even in this peaceful occupation. As this possibly caused the young girl
to still hover timidly in the distance, he suddenly entered the
wagon and reappeared carrying a tin bucket, with which he somewhat
ostentatiously crossed her path, his eyes darkly wandering as if seeking
something.
“If you're lookin' for the spring, it's a spell furder on--by the
willows.”
It was a pleasant voice, the teamster thought, albeit with a dry, crisp,
New England accent unfamiliar to his ears. He looked into the depths
of an unlovely blue-check sunbonnet, and saw certain small, irregular
features and a sallow check, lit up by a pair of perfectly innocent,
trustful, and wondering brown eyes. Their timid possessor seemed to be a
girl of seventeen, whose figure, although apparently clad in one of her
mother's gowns, was still undeveloped and repressed by rustic hardship
and innutrition. As her eyes met his she saw that the face of this
gloomy stranger was still youthful, by no means implacable, and, even at
that moment, was actually suffused by a brick-colored blush! In matters
of mere intuition, the sex, even in its most rustic phase, is still our
superior; and this unsophisticated girl, as the trespasser stammered,
“Thank ye, miss,” was instinctively emboldened to greater freedom.
“Dad ain't tu hum, but ye kin have a drink o' milk if ye keer for it.”
She motioned shyly towards the cabin, and then led the way. The
stranger, with an inarticulate murmur, afterwards disguised as a cough,
followed her meekly. Nevertheless, by the time they had reached the
cabin he had shaken his long hair over his eyes again, and a dark
abstraction gathered chiefly in his eyebrows. But it did not efface from
the girl's mind the previous concession of a blush, and, although it
added to her curiosity, did not alarm her. He drank the milk awkwardly.
But by the laws of courtesy, even among the most savage tribes, she
felt he was, at that moment at least, harmless. A timid smile fluttered
around her mouth as she said:--
“When ye hung up them things I thought ye might be havin' suthing to
swap or sell. That is,”--with tactful politeness,--“mother was wantin'
a new skillet, and it would have been handy if you'd had one. But”--with
an apologetic glance at his equipments--“if it ain't your business, it's
all right, and no offense.”
“I've got a lot o' skillets,” said the strange teamster, with marked
condescension, “and she can have one. They're all that's left outer a
heap o' trader's stuff captured by Injuns t'other side of Laramie. We
had a big fight to get 'em back. Lost two of our best men,--scalped at
Bloody Creek,--and had to drop a dozen redskins in their tracks,--me and
another man,--lyin' flat in er wagon and firin' under the flaps o'
the canvas. I don't know ez they waz wuth it,” he added in gloomy
retrospect; “but I've got to get rid of 'em, I reckon, somehow, afore I
work over to Deadman's Gulch again.”
The young girl's eyes brightened timidly with a feminine mingling of
imaginative awe and personal, pitying interest. He was, after all, so
young and amiable looking for such hardships and adventures. And with
all this, he--this Indian fighter--was a little afraid of HER!
“Then that's why you carry that knife and six-shooter?” she said. “But
you won't want 'em now, here in the settlement.”
“That's ez mebbe,” said the stranger darkly. He paused, and then
suddenly, as if recklessly accepting a dangerous risk, unbuckled his
revolver and handed it abstractedly to the young girl. But the sheath
of the bowie-knife was a fixture in his body-belt, and he was obliged
to withdraw the glittering blade by itself, and to hand it to her in all
its naked terrors. The young girl received the weapons with a smiling
complacency. Upon such altars as these the skeptical reader will
remember that Mars had once hung his “battered shield,” his lance, and
“uncontrolled crest.”
Nevertheless, the warlike teamster was not without embarrassment.
Muttering something about the necessity of “looking after his stock,”
he achieved a hesitating bow, backed awkwardly out of the door, and
receiving from the conquering hands of the young girl his weapons again,
was obliged to carry them somewhat ingloriously in his hands across
the road, and put them on the wagon seat, where, in company with the
culinary articles, they seemed to lose their distinctively aggressive
character. Here, although his cheek was still flushed from his peaceful
encounter, his voice regained some of its hoarse severity as he drove
the oxen from the muddy pool into which they had luxuriantly wandered,
and brought their fodder from the wagon. Later, as the sun was setting,
he lit a corn-cob pipe, and somewhat ostentatiously strolled down the
road, with a furtive eye lingering upon the still open door of the
farmhouse. Presently two angular figures appeared from it, the farmer
and his wife, intent on barter.
These he received with his previous gloomy preoccupation, and a slight
variation of the story he had told their daughter. It is possible
that his suggestive indifference piqued and heightened the bargaining
instincts of the woman, for she not only bought the skillet, but
purchased a clock and a roll of carpeting. Still more, in some effusion
of rustic courtesy, she extended an invitation to him to sup with them,
which he declined and accepted in the same embarrassed breath, returning
the proffered hospitality by confidentially showing them a couple of
dried scalps, presumably of Indian origin. It was in the same moment
of human weakness that he answered their polite query as to “what they
might call him,” by intimating that his name was “Red Jim,”--a title of
achievement by which he was generally known, which for the present must
suffice them. But during the repast that followed this was shortened to
“Mister Jim,” and even familiarly by the elders to plain “Jim.” Only
the young girl habitually used the formal prefix in return for the “Miss
Phoebe” that he called her.
With three such sympathetic and unexperienced auditors the gloomy
embarrassment of Red Jim was soon dissipated, although it could hardly
be said that he was generally communicative. Dark tales of Indian
warfare, of night attacks and wild stampedes, in which he had always
taken a prominent part, flowed freely from his lips, but little else
of his past history or present prospects. And even his narratives of
adventure were more or less fragmentary and imperfect in detail.
“You woz saying,” said the farmer, with slow, matter of fact, New
England deliberation, “ez how you guessed you woz beguiled amongst the
Injins by your Mexican partner, a pow'ful influential man, and yet you
woz the only one escaped the gen'ral slarterin'. How came the Injins to
kill HIM,--their friend?”
“They didn't,” returned Jim, with ominously averted eyes.
“What became of him?” continued the farmer.
Red Jim shadowed his eyes with his hand, and cast a dark glance of
scrutiny out of the doors and windows. The young girl perceived it with
timid, fascinated concern, and said hurriedly:--
“Don't ask him, father! Don't you see he mustn't tell?”
“Not when spies may be hangin' round, and doggin' me at every step,”
said Red Jim, as if reflecting, with another furtive glance towards
the already fading prospect without. “They've sworn to revenge him,” he
added moodily.
A momentary silence followed. The farmer coughed slightly, and looked
dubiously at his wife. But the two women had already exchanged feminine
glances of sympathy for this evident slayer of traitors, and were
apparently inclined to stop any adverse criticism.
In the midst of which a shout was heard from the road. The farmer and
his family instinctively started. Red Jim alone remained unmoved,--a
fact which did not lessen the admiration of his feminine audience. The
host rose quickly, and went out. The figure of a horseman had halted
in the road, but after a few moments' conversation with the farmer they
both moved towards the house and disappeared. When the farmer returned,
it was to say that “one of them 'Frisco dandies, who didn't keer
about stoppin' at the hotel in the settlement,” had halted to give his
“critter” a feed and drink that he might continue his journey. He had
asked him to come in while the horse was feeding, but the stranger had
“guessed he'd stretch his legs outside and smoke his cigar;” he might
have thought the company “not fine enough for him,” but he was “civil
spoken enough, and had an all-fired smart hoss, and seemed to know how
to run him.” To the anxious inquiries of his wife and daughter he added
that the stranger didn't seem like a spy or a Mexican; was “as young
as HIM,” pointing to the moody Red Jim, “and a darned sight more
peaceful-like in style.”
Perhaps owing to the criticism of the farmer, perhaps from some still
lurking suspicion of being overheard by eavesdroppers, or possibly from
a humane desire to relieve the strained apprehension of the women, Red
Jim, as the farmer disappeared to rejoin the stranger, again dropped
into a lighter and gentler vein of reminiscence. He told them how, when
a mere boy, he had been lost from an emigrant train in company with a
little girl some years his junior. How, when they found themselves alone
on the desolate plain, with the vanished train beyond their reach, he
endeavored to keep the child from a knowledge of the real danger of
their position, and to soothe and comfort her. How he carried her on
his back, until, exhausted, he sank in a heap of sage-brush. How he was
surrounded by Indians, who, however, never suspected his hiding-place;
and how he remained motionless and breathless with the sleeping child
for three hours, until they departed. How, at the last moment, he had
perceived a train in the distance, and had staggered with her thither,
although shot at and wounded by the trainmen in the belief that he
was an Indian. How it was afterwards discovered that the child was the
long-lost daughter of a millionaire; how he had resolutely refused
any gratuity for saving her, and she was now a peerless young heiress,
famous in California. Whether this lighter tone of narrative suited him
better, or whether the active feminine sympathy of his auditors
helped him along, certain it was that his story was more coherent and
intelligible and his voice less hoarse and constrained than in his
previous belligerent reminiscences; his expression changed, and even his
features worked into something like gentler emotion. The bright eyes
of Phoebe, fastened upon him, turned dim with a faint moisture, and
her pale cheek took upon itself a little color. The mother, after
interjecting “Du tell,” and “I wanter know,” remained open-mouthed,
staring at her visitor. And in the silence that followed, a pleasant,
but somewhat melancholy voice came from the open door.
“I beg your pardon, but I thought I couldn't be mistaken. It IS my old
friend, Jim Hooker!”
Everybody started. Red Jim stumbled to his feet with an inarticulate and
hysteric exclamation. Yet the apparition that now stood in the doorway
was far from being terrifying or discomposing. It was evidently the
stranger,--a slender, elegantly-knit figure, whose upper lip was faintly
shadowed by a soft, dark mustache indicating early manhood, and whose
unstudied ease in his well-fitting garments bespoke the dweller of
cities. Good-looking and well-dressed, without the consciousness of
being either; self-possessed through easy circumstances, yet without
self-assertion; courteous by nature and instinct as well as from an
experience of granting favors, he might have been a welcome addition
to even a more critical company. But Red Jim, hurriedly seizing his
outstretched hand, instantly dragged him away from the doorway into the
road and out of hearing of his audience.
“Did you hear what I was saying?” he asked hoarsely.
“Well, yes,--I think so,” returned the stranger, with a quiet smile.
“Ye ain't goin' back on me, Clarence, are ye,--ain't goin' to gimme away
afore them, old pard, are ye?” said Jim, with a sudden change to almost
pathetic pleading.
“No,” returned the stranger, smiling. “And certainly not before that
interested young lady, Jim. But stop. Let me look at you.”
He held out both hands, took Jim's, spread them apart for a moment with
a boyish gesture, and, looking in his face, said half mischievously,
half sadly, “Yes, it's the same old Jim Hooker,--unchanged.”
“But YOU'RE changed,--reg'lar war paint, Big Injin style!” said Hooker,
looking up at him with an awkward mingling of admiration and envy.
“Heard you struck it rich with the old man, and was Mister Brant now!”
“Yes,” said Clarence gently, yet with a smile that had not only a tinge
of weariness but even of sadness in it.
Unfortunately, the act, which was quite natural to Clarence's
sensitiveness, and indeed partly sprang from some concern in his old
companion's fortunes, translated itself by a very human process to
Hooker's consciousness as a piece of rank affectation. HE would have
been exalted and exultant in Clarence's place, consequently any other
exhibition was only “airs.” Nevertheless, at the present moment Clarence
was to be placated.
“You didn't mind my telling that story about your savin' Susy as my own,
did ye?” he said, with a hasty glance over his shoulder. “I only did it
to fool the old man and women-folks, and make talk. You won't blow on
me? Ye ain't mad about it?”
It had crossed Clarence's memory that when they were both younger
Jim Hooker had once not only borrowed his story, but his name and
personality as well. Yet in his loyalty to old memories there was
mingled no resentment for past injury. “Of course not,” he said, with a
smile that was, however, still thoughtful. “Why should I? Only I ought
to tell you that Susy Peyton is living with her adopted parents not ten
miles from here, and it might reach their ears. She's quite a young lady
now, and if I wouldn't tell her story to strangers, I don't think YOU
ought to, Jim.”
He said this so pleasantly that even the skeptical Jim forgot what he
believed were the “airs and graces” of self-abnegation, and said,
“Let's go inside, and I'll introduce you,” and turned to the house. But
Clarence Brant drew back. “I'm going on as soon as my horse is fed,
for I'm on a visit to Peyton, and I intend to push as far as Santa Inez
still to-night. I want to talk with you about yourself, Jim,” he
added gently; “your prospects and your future. I heard,” he went on
hesitatingly, “that you were--at work--in a restaurant in San Francisco.
I'm glad to see that you are at least your own master here,”--he glanced
at the wagon. “You are selling things, I suppose? For yourself, or
another? Is that team yours? Come,” he added, still pleasantly, but in
an older and graver voice, with perhaps the least touch of experienced
authority, “be frank, Jim. Which is it? Never mind what things you've
told IN THERE, tell ME the truth about yourself. Can I help you in any
way? Believe me, I should like to. We have been old friends, whatever
difference in our luck, I am yours still.”
Thus adjured, the redoubtable Jim, in a hoarse whisper, with a furtive
eye on the house, admitted that he was traveling for an itinerant
peddler, whom he expected to join later in the settlement; that he
had his own methods of disposing of his wares, and (darkly) that his
proprietor and the world generally had better not interfere with him;
that (with a return to more confidential lightness) he had already
“worked the Wild West Injin” business so successfully as to dispose of
his wares, particularly in yonder house, and might do even more if not
prematurely and wantonly “blown upon,” “gone back on,” or “given away.”
“But wouldn't you like to settle down on some bit of land like this, and
improve it for yourself?” said Clarence. “All these valley terraces are
bound to rise in value, and meantime you would be independent. It could
be managed, Jim. I think I could arrange it for you,” he went on, with a
slight glow of youthful enthusiasm. “Write to me at Peyton's ranch,
and I'll see you when I come back, and we'll hunt up something for
you together.” As Jim received the proposition with a kind of gloomy
embarrassment, he added lightly, with a glance at the farmhouse, “It
might be near HERE, you know; and you'd have pleasant neighbors, and
even eager listeners to your old adventures.”
“You'd better come in a minit before you go,” said Jim, clumsily evading
a direct reply. Clarence hesitated a moment, and then yielded. For an
equal moment Jim Hooker was torn between secret jealousy of his old
comrade's graces and a desire to present them as familiar associations
of his own. But his vanity was quickly appeased.
Need it be said that the two women received this fleck and foam of
a super-civilization they knew little of as almost an impertinence
compared to the rugged, gloomy, pathetic, and equally youthful hero of
an adventurous wilderness of which they knew still less? What availed
the courtesy and gentle melancholy of Clarence Brant beside the
mysterious gloom and dark savagery of Red Jim? Yet they received him
patronizingly, as one who was, like themselves, an admirer of manly
grace and power, and the recipient of Jim's friendship. The farmer alone
seemed to prefer Clarence, and yet the latter's tacit indorsement of Red
Jim, through his evident previous intimacy with him, impressed the man
in Jim's favor. All of which Clarence saw with that sensitive perception
which had given him an early insight into human weakness, yet still had
never shaken his youthful optimism. He smiled a little thoughtfully, but
was openly fraternal to Jim, courteous to his host and family, and,
as he rode away in the faint moonlight, magnificently opulent in his
largess to the farmer,--his first and only assertion of his position.
The farmhouse, straggling barn, and fringe of dusty willows, the white
dome of the motionless wagon, with the hanging frying pans and kettles
showing in the moonlight like black silhouettes against the staring
canvas, all presently sank behind Clarence like the details of a dream,
and he was alone with the moon, the hazy mystery of the level, grassy
plain, and the monotony of the unending road. As he rode slowly along he
thought of that other dreary plain, white with alkali patches and brown
with rings of deserted camp-fires, known to his boyhood of deprivation,
dependency, danger, and adventure, oddly enough, with a strange delight;
and his later years of study, monastic seclusion, and final ease
and independence, with an easy sense of wasted existence and useless
waiting. He remembered his homeless childhood in the South, where
servants and slaves took the place of the father he had never known,
and the mother that he rarely saw; he remembered his abandonment to a
mysterious female relation, where his natural guardians seemed to
have overlooked and forgotten him, until he was sent, an all too young
adventurer, to work his passage on an overland emigrant train across the
plains; he remembered, as yesterday, the fears, the hopes, the dreams
and dangers of that momentous journey. He recalled his little playmate,
Susy, and their strange adventures--the whole incident that the
imaginative Jim Hooker had translated and rehearsed as his own--rose
vividly before him. He thought of the cruel end of that pilgrimage,
which again left him homeless and forgotten by even the relative he was
seeking in a strange land. He remembered his solitary journey to the
gold mines, taken with a boy's trust and a boy's fearlessness, and
the strange protector he had found there, who had news of his missing
kinsman; he remembered how this protector--whom he had at once
instinctively loved--transferred him to the house of this new-found
relation, who treated him kindly and sent him to the Jesuit school, but
who never awakened in him a feeling of kinship. He dreamed again of his
life at school, his accidental meeting with Susy at Santa Clara, the
keen revival of his boyish love for his old playmate, now a pretty
schoolgirl, the petted adopted child of wealthy parents. He recalled
the terrible shock that interrupted this boyish episode: the news of the
death of his protector, and the revelation that this hard, silent, and
mysterious man was his own father, whose reckless life and desperate
reputation had impelled him to assume a disguise.
He remembered how his sudden accession to wealth and independence had
half frightened him, and had always left a lurking sensitiveness that
he was unfairly favored, by some mere accident, above his less lucky
companions. The rude vices of his old associates had made him impatient
of the feebler sensual indulgences of the later companions of
his luxury, and exposed their hollow fascinations; his sensitive
fastidiousness kept him clean among vulgar temptations; his clear
perceptions were never blinded by selfish sophistry. Meantime his
feeling for Susy remained unchanged. Pride had kept him from seeking the
Peytons. His present visit was as unpremeditated as Peyton's invitation
had been unlooked for by him. Yet he had not allowed himself to be
deceived. He knew that this courtesy was probably due to the change in
his fortune, although he had hoped it might have been some change in
their opinion brought about by Susy. But he would at least see
her again, not in the pretty, half-clandestine way she had thought
necessary, but openly and as her equal.
In his rapid ride he seemed to have suddenly penetrated the peaceful
calm of the night. The restless irritation of the afternoon trade winds
had subsided; the tender moonlight had hushed and tranquilly possessed
the worried plain; the unending files of wild oats, far spaced and
distinct, stood erect and motionless as trees; something of the sedate
solemnity of a great forest seemed to have fallen upon their giant
stalks. There was no dew. In that light, dry air, the heavier dust no
longer rose beneath the heels of his horse, whose flying shadow passed
over the field like a cloud, leaving no trail or track behind it. In the
preoccupation of his thought and his breathless retrospect, the young
man had ridden faster than he intended, and he now checked his panting
horse. The influence of the night and the hushed landscape stole over
him; his thoughts took a gentler turn; in that dim, mysterious horizon
line before him, his future seemed to be dreamily peopled with airy,
graceful shapes that more or less took the likeness of Susy. She was
bright, coquettish, romantic, as he had last seen her; she was older,
graver, and thoughtfully welcome of him; or she was cold, distant, and
severely forgetful of the past. How would her adopted father and mother
receive him? Would they ever look upon him in the light of a suitor to
the young girl? He had no fear of Peyton,--he understood his own sex,
and, young as he was, knew already how to make himself respected; but
how could he overcome that instinctive aversion which Mrs. Peyton had
so often made him feel he had provoked? Yet in this dreamy hush of earth
and sky, what was not possible? His boyish heart beat high with daring
visions.
He saw Mrs. Peyton in the porch, welcoming him with that maternal smile
which his childish longing had so often craved to share with Susy.
Peyton would be there, too,--Peyton, who had once pushed back his torn
straw hat to look approvingly in his boyish eyes; and Peyton, perhaps,
might be proud of him.
Suddenly he started. A voice in his very ear!
“Bah! A yoke of vulgar cattle grazing on lands that were thine by right
and law. Neither more nor less than that. And I tell thee, Pancho, like
cattle, to be driven off or caught and branded for one's own. Ha! There
are those who could swear to the truth of this on the Creed. Ay! and
bring papers stamped and signed by the governor's rubric to prove it.
And not that I hate them,--bah! what are those heretic swine to me? But
thou dost comprehend me? It galls and pricks me to see them swelling
themselves with stolen husks, and men like thee, Pancho, ousted from
their own land.”
Clarence had halted in utter bewilderment. No one was visible before
him, behind him, on either side. The words, in Spanish, came from the
air, the sky, the distant horizon, he knew not which. Was he still
dreaming? A strange shiver crept over his skin as if the air had grown
suddenly chill. Then another mysterious voice arose, incredulous, half
mocking, but equally distinct and clear.
“Caramba! What is this? You are wandering, friend Pancho. You are still
smarting from his tongue. He has the grant confirmed by his brigand
government; he has the POSSESSION, stolen by a thief like himself; and
he has the Corregidors with him. For is he not one of them himself, this
Judge Peyton?”
Peyton! Clarence felt the blood rush back to his face in astonishment
and indignation. His heels mechanically pressed his horse's flanks, and
the animal sprang forward.
“Guarda! Mira!” said the voice again in a quicker, lower tone. But
this time it was evidently in the field beside him, and the heads and
shoulders of two horsemen emerged at the same moment from the tall ranks
of wild oats. The mystery was solved. The strangers had been making
their way along a lower level of the terraced plain, hidden by the
grain, not twenty yards away, and parallel with the road they were now
ascending to join. Their figures were alike formless in long striped
serapes, and their features undistinguishable under stiff black
sombreros.
“Buenas noches, senor,” said the second voice, in formal and cautious
deliberation.
A sudden inspiration made Clarence respond in English, as if he had not
comprehended the stranger's words, “Eh?”
“Gooda-nighta,” repeated the stranger.
“Oh, good-night,” returned Clarence. They passed him. Their spurs
tinkled twice or thrice, their mustangs sprang forward, and the next
moment the loose folds of their serapes were fluttering at their sides
like wings in their flight.