She said more than has been quoted; epithets she hurled upon the recumbent form that seemed a man asleep save for the little drift of smoke from his cigarette; epithets which she had heard the vaqueros use at the corrals upon certain occasions when they did not know that she was near; epithets of which she did not know the meaning at all.

“Bravo!” applauded some one, and she turned to see that Manuel and Carlos, Jose’s head vaquero, had ridden up to the group very quietly, and had been listening for no one knew how long.

The senorita was so angry that she was not in the least abashed by the eavesdropping.  She smiled wickedly, drew off a glove and tossed it to Manuel, who caught it dexterously without waiting to see why she wanted him to have it.

“Take that to Jose, for a token,” she cried recklessly.  “Tell him I have put a wish upon it; and if he wears it next his heart in the duelo to-morrow he will win without fail.  Tell Jose I shall ask the Blessed Virgin to-night to let no accident befall him, and that I shall save the first two dances for him and none other!”

She was not a finished actress, because of her youth.  She betrayed by a glance his way that she spoke for Jack’s benefit.  And Jack, in the hardening of his stubborn anger, blew a mouthful of smoke upward into a ring which the breeze broke almost immediately, and laughed aloud.

Teresita heard, bit her lips cruelly at failing to bring that stubborn gringo to his feet—­and to hers!—­and wheeled Tejon close to Manuel and Carlos.  She rode away between the two towards home, and she did not once look behind her until she had gone so far she feared she could not see what her blue-eyed one was doing.  Then she turned, and her teeth went together with a click.  For Jack was lying just as she had left him, with his head upon his arm as if he might be asleep.

CHAPTER XXI

FIESTA DAY

Dade, rolling over in bed and at the same moment opening his eyes reluctantly upon the new day, that he hated, beheld Jack half-dressed and shaving his left jaw, and looking as if he were committing murder upon an enemy.  Dade watched him idly; he could afford the luxury of idleness that morning; for rodeo was over, and he was lying between linen sheets on a real bed, under a roof other than the branches of a tree; and if his mind had rested as easily as his body, he would have been almost happy.

But this was the day of the fiesta; and with the remembrance of that vital fact came a realization that on this day the Picardo ranch would be the Mecca toward which all California was making pilgrimage; and, he feared, the battle-ground of the warring interests and prejudices of the pilgrims themselves.