As usual, Sebastien’s approach was announced by the ring of hoofs, but, imagining it to be some charcoal-burner, Billy, who was already at his bricks, did not look up till warned by Caliban’s stealthy hiss. In his surprise he forgot to reply to Sebastien’s greeting, and simply answered the other’s question.
“Don Roberto? He is not here?”
“No, gone out to the railroad. Won’t be back for three days.”
“Caramba! After I had climbed these heights to see him!” Though his eyebrows and hands both testified to Sebastien’s disappointment, a sharper eye than Billy’s might have discerned the underlying satisfaction. Moreover, if he appeared merely inquisitively friendly during the hour he stayed to chat, not one minute was wasted. From the first question to his final comment on Billy’s work, “You gringos are certainly a wonderful people,” all was directed to one end.
“Yes, we usually get there,” Billy modestly admitted, and his next words paved a lovely road for Sebastien to come to his purpose. “The building would go faster if I hadn’t so many things to do. After laying bricks all day I have to turn in and cook, and, though it’s pretty tough, there doesn’t seem to be any way out of it. We tried both of the peons at the cooking and nearly died of the hash they served up.”
“Tut! tut!” Sebastien was there with ready sympathy. “This is too bad. Soon you will be completely worn out.” After a pause, during which he may be imagined as taking Billy’s mental temperature, he said: “Bueno! I have it! I shall send you a cook—one than whom there is no finer in all this country.”
If he had harbored any suspicions, Billy’s beaming smile now wiped them out. “That’s awfully good of you. Seyd will be ever so glad. When can we expect your cook?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.” Scenting hospitality in Billy’s glance toward the hut, Sebastien hastily added, “That is, if I reach home tonight—to do which I shall have to be going.” And refusing the offer of lunch which justified his premonition, he rode away, leaving Billy puffed up with pride.
“I rather think I turned that trick well,” he congratulated himself. “Seyd couldn’t have done it a bit better.” Occasional fat chuckles emitted during the afternoon testified to his increasing opinion of his own diplomacy. But his rising pride did not attain its meridian until, midway of the following afternoon, a pretty brown girl came driving a burro up the trail.
Having anticipated a man cook, it required five minutes of vehement Spanish, helped out by a wealth of gesticulation, to convince Billy that the girl was not an estray from a neighboring hamlet, and while her dark eyes, white teeth, and shapely brown arms were engaged in explanation they wrought other work. By the time Billy was finally able to understand the fact he was hardly in condition to pass upon it.
It is only right to state that he had little time for reflection, for from the very beginning the girl took the direction of affairs into her own hands. Driving her burro over to the stable she unpacked a stone metate, or grinding-stone, a pestle, and a quantity of soaked corn. She turned the beast out to graze, then dropped at once on her knees and began grinding paste for the supper tortillas, or cakes. When, toward evening, Billy dropped in for a drink he found her mantle spread on his bed and certain articles of feminine wear depending from the nails which had hitherto been sacred to his own clothing.
Blushing furiously, he went out—without the drink. But, though his colors would have done credit to a girl, they were not to be weighed in the same balance with the green peppers stuffed with minced beef that she served at supper with the tortillas. While eating with an appetite born of a protracted canned diet it is to be feared that he fed just as ravenously on the atmosphere shed by her luxurious presence. When, after supper, he sat in the doorway and watched the blood-reds of the sunset flow through the valley he might, with his fiery stubble, have passed for some ancient Celt at the mouth of his cave. Not until he caught a second glimpse of the mantle while stealing a look at the girl washing up dishes did he return to his usual bashful self. Slipping quietly inside, he gathered up the blankets off Seyd’s bed and carried them out to make his own couch under a tree.
This procedure on his part the girl watched with a certain astonishment which she vented on Caliban while giving him his breakfast next day. “I had thought differently of the gringos. Be they all like this one—”
“Give time, give time!” the hunchback advised. “Big fish are ever slow at the hook, but when they once rise—” The tortilla he used for illustration vanished at one gulp. “Wait till thou seest Don Roberto. There’s a man! Of his own strength he threw a burro off the trail into the Barranca and so turned the train that would otherwise have driven him and the ‘Red Head’ into the canyon. ’Tis so. The history of it was written by Don Sebastien’s whip on the shoulders of Mattias and Carlos. And what of the magic that turned my bullet fired at twenty yards, then found me and Calixto in black jungle and shot us down from the high cliff? Sí, chief of the other is he, so waste not thy freshness.”
“Bah! am I a fool?” She elevated her nose.
This conversation undoubtedly explains the staidness of her demeanor that day. Not that it was necessary to keep Billy at his distance. Leaving his painful modesty out of the question, in his ignorance of the Mexican peon folk he placed her in his imagination on the same plane as a white girl, and as the color of a skin cuts no
