“Nat,” he said, “I’ve quarreled with your dad.  There’s nothing to talk about.  I must go.”

“Go, Lew?  Go where?”

Lewis shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “Just go.”

Natalie laid her head against him.  Her two hands gripped his shoulders.  She sobbed as though her heart would break.  Lewis put his arm about her.  He felt the twitching bones of her thin, warm body.  His face was in her hair.

“Ah, Natalie,” he murmured, brokenly, “don’t cry! don’t cry!”

They were children.  They did not think to kiss.

CHAPTER X

Lewis traveled toward the ancient town of Oeiras.  He had cast about in his mind for some means of livelihood and had decided to become a goatskin-buyer.  He was hoping to come to an arrangement with some merchant in Oeiras.

One morning as he jogged along, his eyes on the ground, his thoughts far away, he heard the patter of many hoofs on the hard clay trail.  A pack-train was coming toward him.  At its head rode a guide.  The guide stopped upon meeting Lewis, and immediately every mule behind him stopped, too.

“The blessing of God be upon you, friend!” he drawled.  “Whence do you come and whither do you go?”

“God’s blessing be praised,” answered Lewis.  “I come from the hills.  I go to Oeiras.”

“To Oeiras?  We come thence.  It is a long road, Oeiras.”

“I go to seek a merchant who will start me as a goat-skin-buyer.  Do you know of any such?”

“A goatskin-buyer?  Friend, for almost every goat there is a goatskin-buyer.  My brother is one, my father-in-law another.  I myself shall become one after this trip is over.  You would do well to choose some other occupation.”

Lewis did not smile at the man’s guile, though it had not escaped him.  He was gazing open-mouthed at a horseman who was forcing his way past the laden mules.  From some distance the horseman yelled in English: 

“What the devil’s the matter now?  Ye gods and little fishes! what are you stopping for now?”

The guide shrugged his shoulders and tapped his head.

“Mad,” he said; “an idiot.  Imagine!  He thinks those are words!”

The horseman drew up beside them, wrath in his face.

“Sir,” said Lewis, “your guide stopped to greet me.  It is the custom of the country.”

Lewis and Natalie spoke English with the precision of the adults from whom they had learned it.  They had never heard the argot of American childhood, but from mammy and from the tongue of their adopted land they had acquired a soft slurring of speech which gave a certain quaintness to their diction.

It was the turn of the stranger to stare open-mouthed.  Lewis wore the uniform of the local cow-boy:  a thick, wide-brimmed leather hat, fastened under the chin with a thong; a loose deerskin jumper and deerskin breeches that fitted tightly to the leg and ended in a long flap over the instep.  On his feet were sandals and grotesque, handwrought spurs.  His red bundle was tied to the cantle of his saddle.  At hearing precise English from such a source, the stranger felt an astonishment almost equal to Balaam’s surprise on hearing his ass speak.