“A man dead?” the girl repeated, unwilling to grasp fully.

“You will see,” returned Ignacio.

CHAPTER II

THE SHERIFF OF SAN JUAN

The girl in the old Mission garden stood staring at Ignacio Chavez a long time, seeming compelled by a force greater than her own to watch him tugging and jerking at his bells.  Plainly enough she understood that this was an alarm being sounded; a man dead through violence, and the bell-ringer stirring the town with it.  But when presently he let two of the ropes slip out of his hands and began a slow, mournful tolling of the Captain alone, she shuddered a little and withdrew.

That it might be merely a case of a man wounded, even badly, did not once suggest itself to her.  Ignacio had spoken as one who knew, in full confidence and with finality.  She should see!  She returned to the little bench which one day was to be a bright green, and sat down.  She could see that again the pigeons were circling excitedly; that from the baking street little puffs of dust arose to hang idly in the still air as though they were painted upon the clear canvas of the sky.  She heard the voices of men, faint, quick sounds against the tolling of the bell.  Then suddenly all was very still once more; Ignacio had allowed the Captain to resume his silent brooding, and came to her.

“I must go to see who it is,” he apologized.  “Then I will know better how to ring for him.  The sheepman from Las Palmas, I bet you.  For did I not see when just now I passed the Casa Blanca that he was a little drunk with Senor Galloway’s whiskey?  And does not every one know he sold many sheep and that means much money these days?  Si, senorita; it will be the sheepman from Las Palmas.”

He was gone, slouching along again and in no haste now that he had fulfilled his first duty.  What haste could there possibly be since, sheepman from Las Palmas or another, he was dead and therefore must wait upon Ignacio Chavez’s pleasure?  Somehow she gleaned this thought from his manner and therefore did not speak as she watched him depart.

That portion of the street which she could see from her bench was empty, the dust settling, thinning, disappearing.  Farther down toward the Casa Blanca she could imagine the little knots of men asking one another what had happened and how; the chief actor in this fragment of human drama she could picture lying inert, uncaring that it was for him that a bell had tolled and would toll again, that men congregated curiously.