Manuel did not mean to tattle; he merely let fall a word or two to Valencia, whom he met occasionally in the open and accused bitterly of having a treacherous friendship for the gringos, and particularly for the blue-eyed one.

“Because that mongrel whose hair is neither red nor yellow nor black speaks praise to you of your skill, perchance, and because he makes you laugh with the foolish tales he tells, you would turn against your own kind, Valencia.  No honest Spaniard can be a friend of the gringos.  Of the patron,” he added rather sorrowfully, “I do not speak, for truly he is in his dotage and therefore not to be judged too harshly.  But you, Valencia—­you should think twice before you choose a gringo for your friend; a gringo who speaks fair to the father that he may cover his love-making to the daughter, who is easily fooled, like all younglings.

“The young Don Jose will deal with that blue-eyed one, Valencia.  Every day he swears it by all the saints.  He but waits for the rodeo and until I have healed his shoulder—­and then you shall see!  There will be no love-making then for the gringo.  Jose will have the senorita yet for his bride, just as the saints have desired since they played together in the patio and I watched them that they did not run into the corrals to be kicked in the head, perchance, by the mustangs we had there.  Jose, I tell you, has loved her too long to stand now with the sombrero in hand while that arrogant hombre steals her away.  When the shoulder is well—­and truly, it was near broken—­and when they meet at the rodeo, then you shall see what will happen to your new gringo friend.”

Valencia did not quarrel with Manuel.  He merely listened and smiled his startlingly sunny smile, and afterwards repeated Manuel’s words almost verbatim to Jack.  Later, he recounted as much as he considered politic to Don Andres himself, just to show how bitter Manuel had become and how unjust.  Valencia, it must be admitted, was not in any sense working in the interests of peace.  He looked forward with a good deal of eagerness to that meeting of which Manuel prated.  He had all the faith of your true hero-worshiper in his new friend, and with the story of that last eventful day which Jack had spent in San Francisco to build his faith upon, he confidently expected to see Jose learn a much-needed lesson in humility—­aye, and Manuel also.

Since even the best-natured gossip is like a breeze to fan the flames of dissension, Don Andres spent an anxious hour in devising a plan that would preserve the peace he loved better even than prosperity.  While he smoked behind the passion vines on the veranda, he thought his way slowly from frowns to a smile of satisfaction, and finally called a peon scurrying across the patio to stand humbly before him while he gave a calm order.  His majordomo he would see, as speedily as was convenient to a man as full of ranch business as Dade Hunter found himself.