The Gringos eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 292 pages of information about The Gringos.

The Gringos eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 292 pages of information about The Gringos.

The hardness left Jack’s lips but not his eyes, while he looked from her to the don, smoking imperturbably his cigar beside her.

“There is no way, Senora, except for a coward.  I have done what I could; I know that Jose’s skill is great with riatas, and the choice was mine.  I might have said pistols,” he reminded her gently, but with meaning.

The plump hands of the senora went betrayingly into the air and her earrings tinkled with the horror that shook her cushiony person.  “Not pistols!  No, no—­for then Jose would surely be killed!  Gracias, Senor!  With riatas my Jose can surely give good account of himself.  Three times has he won the medalla oro in fair contest.  He is a wizard with the rawhide.  Myself, I have wept with pride to see him throw it at the fiestas—­”

“Mother mine, Margarita would have you come at once,” the senorita interrupted her.  “Little Francisco has burned his legs with hot water, and Margarita thinks that your poultice—­”

With twittering exclamations of dismay over the, accident the two women hurried away to minister to the burned legs of Francisco, and Jack rose and flung away his cigarette.  His mouth had again the stubborn look which Dade knew so well, and dreaded also.

“I am sorry for this unpleasantness,” he said perfunctorily, stopping before Don Andres.  “But as I told the senora, I have done all that I can do.  I have named riatas.  I don’t think even you, Don Andres, could ask more of me.  Surely you wouldn’t want to know that your roof had sheltered a coward?”

Don Andres waved away the challenge which the question carried.  “Still, it seems a pity that my family must be made the subject of gossip because of the foolishness of two young men,” he said doggedly, returning to his argument.  “They will say that it is because of my daughter that you fight; and the friendship of years must be set aside while two hot-heads vent their silly spite—­”

“It need not.”  Jack’s head went up an inch.  “I can leave your employ, Don Andres, at any moment.  There is no need for you to be caught between the duties of hospitality and those of friendship.  I can do anything—­I am willing to do anything—­except crawl into a hole, as Dade wrote for me to do.”  A fine, spirited picture he made, standing there with the flames of wrath in his eyes and with neck stiff and his jaws set hard together.

Don Andres looked up at him with secret approval.  He did not love a coward, and truly, this young fellow was brave.  And Jose had deliberately sought the quarrel from the first; justice compelled him to remember that.

“If it might be arranged—­” The don was studying the situation and the man together.  “Almost have I grasped the thread that will unravel the whole.  No, no!  I do not mean your going, Senor.  That would but limber the tongue of scandal; and besides, I do not mean that I withdraw my friendship from you.  A man must be narrow, indeed, if he cannot carry more than one friendship in his soul.

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Project Gutenberg
The Gringos from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.