“Let him go,” said Eulogia.  “Do you want to see a man cut in pieces before your eyes?  You would have to say rosaries for the rest of your life.”  She leaned over the side of the wagon and spoke to the dazed man, whose courage seemed to have deserted him.

“Don Abel Hudson, you do not look so gallant as at the ball last night, but you helped us to get there, and I will save you now.  Get into the wagon, and take care you crawl in like a snake that you may not be seen.”

“No—­no!” cried the two older women, but in truth they were too terrified not to submit.  Power swung himself mechanically over the wheel, and lay on the floor of the wagon.  Eulogia, in spite of a protesting whimper from Aunt Anastacia, loosened that good dame’s ample outer skirt and threw it over the fallen bandit.  Then the faithful Benito turned his horse and drove as rapidly toward the town as the rough roads would permit.  They barely had started when they heard a great shouting behind them, and turned in apprehension, whilst the man on the floor groaned aloud in his fear.  But the Vigilantes rode by them unsuspecting.  Across their saddles they carried the blackened and dripping bodies of Lenares and his lieutenants; through the willows galloped the caballeros in search of John Power.  But they did not find him, then nor after.  Dona Pomposa hid him in her woodhouse until midnight, when he stole away and was never seen near San Luis again.  A few years later came the word that he had been assassinated by one of his lieutenants in Lower California, and his body eaten by wild hogs.

IX

  “Al contado plasentero
  Del primer beso de amor,
  Un fuego devorador
  Que en mi pecho siento ardor.

  “Y no me vuelvas a besar
  Por que me quema tu aliento,
  Ya desfayeserme siento,
  Mas enbriagada de amor.

  “Si a cuantas estimas, das
  Beso en pruebas de amor;
  Si me amas hasme el favor
  De no besarme jamas.”

A caballero on a prancing horse sang beneath Eulogia’s window, his jingling spurs keeping time to the tinkling of his guitar.  Eulogia turned over in bed, pulling the sheet above her ears, and went to sleep.

The next day, when Don Tomas Garfias asked her hand of her mother, Dona Coquetta accepted him with a shrug of her shoulders.

“And thou lovest me, Eulogia?” murmured the enraptured little dandy as Dona Pomposa and Aunt Anastacia good-naturedly discussed the composition of American pies.

“No.”

“Ay! senorita!  Why, then, dost thou marry me?  No one compels thee.”

“It pleases me.  What affair of thine are my reasons if I consent to marry you?”

“Oh, Eulogia, I believe thou lovest me!  Why not?  Many pretty girls have done so before thee.  Thou wishest only to tease me a little.”

“Well, do not let me see too much of you before the wedding-day, or I may send you back to those who admire you more than I do.”