Juanito, with lowered, bashful eyes, brought coffee, ripe olives from the can, potato salad, and thick, hot steaks.  Soon thereafter the boys began to straggle in.  Helen heard them at the gate, noisy and eager; for them the supper hour was diurnally a time of a joyous lift of spirit.  They clattered along the porch like a crowd of schoolboys just dismissed; they washed outside by the kitchen door with much splashing; they plastered their hair with the common combs and brushes and entered the shortest way, by the kitchen.  They called to each other back and forth; there was the sound of a tremendous clap as some big open hand fell resoundingly upon some tempting back and a roar from the stricken and a gale of booming laughter from the smiter and the scuffle of boots and the crashing of two big bodies falling.  Then they came trooping in until fifteen or twenty had entered.

One by one Howard introduced them.  Plainly none of them knew of Helen’s presence; all of their eyes showed that.  Among them were some few who grew abashed; for the most part they ducked their heads in acknowledgment and said stiffly, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ in wooden manner to both Longstreet and his daughter.  But their noisiness departed from them and they sat down and ate in business-like style.

Never had Helen sat down with so rough a crowd.  They were in shirt sleeves; some wore leathern wrist guards; their vests were open, their shirts dingy, they were unshaven and their hair grew long and ragged; they brought with them a smell of horses.  There was one man among them who must have been sixty at the least, a wiry, stoop, white-haired, white-moustached Mexican.  There were boys between seventeen and nineteen.  There were Americans; at least one Swede; a Scotchman; several who might have been any sort of mixture of southern bloods.  And among them all Helen knew at once, upon the instant that he swaggered in, El Joven, Yellow Barbee.

The two names fitted him as his two gloves may fit a man’s hands; among the young he was The Youngster, as among blondes he was Yellow Barbee.  His dress was extravagantly youthful; his boots bore the tallest heels, he was full-panoplied as to ornate wristbands and belt and chaps as though in full holiday attire; one might wager on the fact of his hat on a nail outside being the tallest crowned, the widest brimmed.  His face was like a girl’s for its smoothness and its prettiness; his eyes were like blue flowers of sweet innocence; on his forehead his hair was a cluster of little yellow ringlets.  And yet he managed full well to convey the impression that he was less innocent than insolent, a somewhat true impression; for from high heels to finger-tips he was a downright, simon-pure rascal.

Yellow Barbee’s eyes fairly invaded Helen’s as he jerked her his bow.  They were two youngsters, and in at least, and perhaps in at most, one matter they were alike:  she prided herself that she ‘knew’ men, and to Barbee all women were an open, oft-read book.