“Surely.  Jacoba is generous.”

“Poor my friend!  Ay, her heart—­Holy Mary!  What is that?”

She and Aunt Anastacia stumbled to their feet.  The sound of pistol shots was echoing between the hills.  Smoke was rising from the willow forest that covered the centre of the valley.

The Indian whipped up his horses with an excited grunt, the two old women reeling and clutching wildly at each other.  At the same time they noticed a crowd of horsemen galloping along the hill which a sudden turn in the road had opened to view.

“It is the Vigilantes,” said Eulogia, calmly, from the front seat.  “They are after John Power and Pio Lenares and their lieutenants.  After that awful murder in the mountains the other day, the men of San Luis and the ranchos swore they would hunt them out, and this morning they traced them to Los Quervos.  I suppose they have made a barricade in the willows, and the Vigilantes are trying to fire them out.”

“Heart of Saint Peter!  Thou little brat!  Why didst thou not tell us of this before, and not let us come here to be shot by flying bullets?”

“I forgot,” said Eulogia, indifferently.

They could see nothing; but curiosity, in spite of fear, held them to the spot.  Smoke and cries, shouts and curses, came from the willows; flocks of agitated crows circled screaming through the smoke.  The men on the hill, their polished horses and brilliant attire flashing in the sun, kept up a ceaseless galloping, hallooing, and waving of sombreros.  The beautiful earth-green and golden hills looked upon a far different scene from the gay cavalcades to which they were accustomed.  Even Don Roberto Duncan, a black silk handkerchief knotted about his head, was dashing, on his gray horse, up and down the valley between the hills and the willows, regardless of chance bullets.  And over all shone the same old sun, indifferent alike to slaughter and pleasure.

“Surely, Anastacia, all those bullets must shoot some one.”

“O—­h—­h, y—­e—­e—­s.”  Her sister was grasping the sunshade with both hands, her eyes starting from her head, although she never removed their gaze from the central volume of smoke.

“Ay, we can sleep in peace if those murdering bandits are killed!” exclaimed Dona Pomposa.  “I have said a rosary every night for five years that they might be taken.  And, holy heaven!  To think that we have been petting the worst of them as if he were General Castro or Juan Alvarado.  To think, my Eulogia!—­that thirsty wild-cat has had his arm about thy waist more times than I can count.”

“He danced very well—­aha!”

Aunt Anastacia gurgled like an idiot.  Dona Pomposa gave a terrific shriek, which Eulogia cut in two with her hand.  A man had crawled out of the brush near them.  His face was black with powder, one arm hung limp at his side.  Dona Pomposa half raised her arm to signal the men on the hill, but her daughter gave it such a pinch that she fell back on the seat, faint for a moment.