“There’s another thing that bothers me, Manuel,” Dade announced humorously, when they three were seated around the pot of frijoles, the earthen pan of smoking carne-seco (which is meat flavored hotly after the Spanish style) and a stack of the tortillas Manuel’s fat hands had created while he talked.

Manuel, bending a tortilla into a scoop wherewith to help himself to the brown beans, raised his black eyes anxiously.  “But is there further hurt?” he asked, and glanced wistfully at the tortilla before laying it down that he might minister further to the senor.

“No—­go on with your supper.  There’s a buckskin horse out there that the gringos may say I stole.  I don’t want the beast; he’s about fourteen years old and he’s got a Roman nose to beat Caesar himself, and a bad eye and a wicked heart.”

“Dios!” murmured Manuel over the list of equine shortcomings and took a large, relieved bite of tortilla and beans.  The senor was pleased to jest with a poor vaquero, but the senor would doubtless explain.  He chewed luxuriously and waited, his black eyes darting from this face which he knew and liked, to that strange one of the blue eyes and the hair that was like the dullest of dull California gold.

“I don’t like that caballo,” went on Dade, helping himself to meat, “and so I’d hate like the deuce to be hung for stealing him; sabe?”

Manuel licked a finger before he spread his hands to show how completely he failed to understand.  “But if the caballo does not please the senor, why then did the senor steal—­”

“You see, I wanted to bring my partner—­Senor Jack Allen—­down here with me.  And he was riding the caballo, and he couldn’t get off—­”

Manuel swore a Spanish oath politely, to please his guest who wished to amaze him.

“Because he was tied on.”  Dade failed just there to keep a betraying hardness out of his voice.  “The Viligantes were—­going to—­hang him.”  The last two words were cut short off with the click of his jaws coming together.

Manuel thereupon swore more sincerely and spilled beans from his tortilla scoop.  He knew the ways of the Committee.  Four months ago—­when the Committee was newer and more just—­they had hanged the third cousin of his half-sister’s husband.  It is true, the man had killed a woman with a knife; yet Manuel’s black beard bristled when he thought of the affront to his hypothetical kinship.

“I had to take the two together,” Dade explained, trying with better success to speak lightly.  “And now, if I turn the buckskin loose, he may go back—­and he may not.  I was wondering—­”

Manuel cut him short.  “To-morrow I ride to town,” he said.  “I will take the caballo back with me, if that pleases the senors.  I will turn him loose near the Mission, and he will go to his stable.

“The senor,” he added, “was very brave. Madre de Dios! To run away with a prisoner of the Vigilantes!  But they will surely kill the senor for that; the taking of the horse, that is nothing.”  His teeth shone briefly under his black mustache.  “One can die but once,” he pointed out, and emphasized his meaning by a swift glance at Jack, moodily nibbling the edge of a corn cake.  “But if the horse does not please the senor—­”