“Part of the way he came, and turned back.  The vaqueros do not know why, except Valencia.  And Valencia—­he is growing a gringo heart, like the patron.  He will speak nothing but boasts of what that blue-eyed one can do.  Me, I came near fighting with Valencia; only he would not do anything but smile foolishly, when I told him what I think of traitors like himself.”

“Let him smile,” advised Jose, “while he may.”  Which was not a threat, in spite of its resemblance to one, but rather a vague reference to the specter of trouble that stalks all men as a fox stalks a quail, and might some day wipe that broad smile from the face of Valencia, as it had swept all the gladness from his own.

He went back and smoked a final cigarette in Dade’s company; and if he said little, his silences held no hint of antagonism.  It was not until Dade rose to return to camp for the night that Jose put the question that had tickled the tongue of him ever since the arrival on his ranch of the Picardo vaqueros.

“Your friend, the Senor Allen—­he is to join you later, perhaps?”

“Jack was left to look after the ranch.”  Dade’s eyes were level in their glance, his voice quiet with the convincing ring of truth.  “He won’t be on rodeo at all.”

Jose went paler than he had been two weeks before with his hurt, but a simple word of polite surprise held all his answer.  For Jack to stay at home, to be near Teresita every day, to have nothing in the way of his love-making—­nothing, since those doting two, her parents, would but smile at whatever she might choose to do—­there was acid enough in that thought to eat away all the warmth, all the generosity Jose possessed.  He let Dade go without even the perfunctory phrases of regret, which custom had made almost compulsory; and Manuel, sitting in silent wrath upon the porch, listened to the steady footfalls moving up and down the room behind him until the moon, that had been shining in his smoldering eyes, slipped over the red tiles of the roof and left all but the tree-tops in black shade.

“Dios!  There will be one gringo the less when those two meet,” he muttered, staring at the tiny glow of his cigarette; and afterward folded his arms tightly over a chest that heaved with the impatience within.  When those two met, Manuel meant to be there also to see.  “Me, I should like to drag him to death with the six-strand riata he despised!” was the beautiful thought he took to bed with him.

Sunshine was lifting the morning fog high above the tree-tops when the old, gray mare, whose every movement tinkled the bell hung around her neck, shook her rough coat vigorously to free it from the moisture which the fog had left; and so jangled a peremptory summons to the herd of saddle horses that bore the brand of Don Andres Picardo upon their right thighs.  At the camp upon the bank of the Guadalupe, the embaladors were shouting curses, commands, jokes, and civilities to one another while they brought orderly packs out of the chaos of camp-equipment that littered the ground.