“I’m driving at this,” spoke up Stewart, presently; and now he was slow and caustic.  “Here’s contraband of war!  Hawe, do you get that?  Arms and ammunition for the rebels across the border!  I charge you as an officer to confiscate these goods and to arrest the smuggler—­Don Carlos.”

These words of Stewart’s precipitated a riot among Don Carlos and his followers, and they surged wildly around the sheriff.  There was an upflinging of brown, clenching hands, a shrill, jabbering babel of Mexican voices.  The crowd around Don Carlos grew louder and denser with the addition of armed vaqueros and barefooted stable-boys and dusty-booted herdsmen and blanketed Mexicans, the last of whom suddenly slipped from doors and windows and round comers.  It was a motley assemblage.  The laced, fringed, ornamented vaqueros presented a sharp contrast to the bare-legged, sandal-footed boys and the ragged herders.  Shrill cries, evidently from Don Carlos, somewhat quieted the commotion.  Then Don Carlos could be heard addressing Sheriff Hawe in an exhortation of mingled English and Spanish.  He denied, he avowed, he proclaimed, and all in rapid, passionate utterance.  He tossed his black hair in his vehemence; he waved his fists and stamped the floor; he rolled his glittering eyes; he twisted his thin lips into a hundred different shapes, and like a cornered wolf showed snarling white teeth.

It seemed to Madeline that Don Carlos denied knowledge of the boxes of contraband goods, then knowledge of their real contents, then knowledge of their destination, and, finally, everything except that they were there in sight, damning witnesses to somebody’s complicity in the breaking of neutrality laws.  Passionate as had been his denial of all this, it was as nothing compared to his denunciation of Stewart.

“Senor Stewart, he keel my Vaquero!” shouted Don Carlos, as, sweating and spent, he concluded his arraignment of the cowboy.  “Him you must arrest!  Senor Stewart a bad man!  He keel my vaquero!”

“Do you hear thet?” yelled Hawe.  “The Don’s got you figgered fer thet little job at El Cajon last fall.”

The clamor burst into a roar.  Hawe began shaking his finger in Stewart’s face and hoarsely shouting.  Then a lithe young vaquero, swift as an Indian, glided under Hawe’s uplifted arm.  Whatever the action he intended, he was too late for its execution.  Stewart lunged out, struck the vaquero, and knocked him off the porch.  As he fell a dagger glittered in the sunlight and rolled clinking over the stones.  The man went down hard and did not move.  With the same abrupt violence, and a manner of contempt, Stewart threw Hawe off the porch, then Don Carlos, who, being less supple, fell heavily.  Then the mob backed before Stewart’s rush until all were down in the courtyard.

The shuffling of feet ceased, the clanking of spurs, and the shouting.  Nels and Monty, now reinforced by Nick Steele, were as shadows of Stewart, so closely did they follow him.  Stewart waved them back and stepped down into the yard.  He was absolutely fearless; but what struck Madeline so keenly was his magnificent disdain.  Manifestly, he knew the nature of the men with whom he was dealing.  From the look of him it was natural for Madeline to expect them to give way before him, which they did, even Hawe and his attendants sullenly retreating.