“Come, then, and I will reckon your wage,” invited the don, coldly courteous as to a stranger.  “You will excuse me, Senor?  I shall not be long.”

Dade’s impulse was to protest, to intercede, to say that he and Jack would go immediately, rather than stir up strife.  But he had served a stern apprenticeship in life, and he knew it was too late now to put out the fires of wrath burning hotly in the hearts of those two; however completely he might efface himself, the resentment was too keen, the quarrel too fresh to be so easily forgotten.

He was standing irresolutely on the steps when Jack came hack from the rose garden, whistling softly an old love-song and smiling fatuously to himself.

“We’re going to take that ride, after all,” he announced gleefully.  “Want to come along?  She’s going to ask her father to come, too—­says it would be terribly improper for us two to ride alone.  What’s the matter?  Got the toothache?”

Dade straightened himself automatically after the slap on the back that was like a cuff from a she-bear, and grunted an uncivil sentence.

“Come over to the saddle-house,” he commanded afterward.  “And take that truck off the senora’s front steps before she sees it and has a fit.  I want to talk to you.”

“Oh, Lord!” wailed Jack, under his breath, but he shouldered the heavy saddle obediently, leaving Dade to bring what remained.  “Cut it short, then; she’s gone to dress and ask her dad; and I’m supposed to order the horses and get you started.  What’s the trouble?”

Dade first went over to the steps before their sleeping-room and deposited Jack’s personal belongings; and Jack seized the minute of grace to call a peon and order the horses saddled.

He turned from watching proudly the glitter of the trimmings on his new saddle as the peon bore it away on his shoulder, and confronted Dade with a tinge of defiance in his manner.

“Well, what have I done now?” he challenged.  “Anything particularly damnable about talking five minutes to a girl in plain sight of her—­”

Dade threw out both hands in a gesture of impatience.  “That isn’t the only important thing in the world,” he pointed out sarcastically.  If the inner hurt served to sharpen his voice, he did not know it.  “Don Andres wants to make me his majordomo.”

Jack’s eyes bulged a little; and if Dade had not wisely side-stepped he would have received another one of Jack’s muscle-tingling slaps on the shoulder.  “Whee-ee!  Say, you’re getting appreciated, at last, old man.  Good for you!  Give me a job?”

“I’m not going to take it,” said Dade.  “I was going to ask you if you want to pull out with me to-morrow.”

Jack’s jaw went slack.  “Not going to take it!” He leaned against the adobe wall behind him and stuck both hands savagely into his pockets.  “Why, you darned chump, how long ago was it that you talked yourself black in the face, trying to make me say I’d stay?  Argued like a man trying to sell shaving soap; swore that nobody but a born idiot would think of passing up such a chance; badgered me into giving in; and now when you’ve got a chance like this, you—­Say, you’re loco!”