“I’m a business man, Don Manuel,” interrupted Gordon.  “I don’t see what chivalry has got to do with it.”

“Senorita Valdes is a woman, young and beautiful.  This little estate is her sole possession.  To fight for it in court is a hardship that Senor Gordon will not force upon her.”

“So she’s young and beautiful, is she?”

“The fairest daughter of Spain in all New Mexico,” soared Don Manuel.

“You don’t say.  A regular case of beauty and the beast, ain’t it?”

“As one of her friends, I ask of you not to oppose her lawful possession of this little vineyard.”

“In the grape business, is she?”

“I speak, senor, in metaphor.  The land is barren, of no value except for sheep grazing.”

“Are you asking me to sell my title or give it?”

“It is a bagatelle—­a mere nothing.  The title is but waste paper, I do assure.  Yet we would purchase—­for a nominal figure—­merely to save court expenses.”

“I see,” Dick laughed softly.  “Just to save court expenses—­because you’d rather I’d have the money than the lawyers.  That’s right good of you.”

Pesquiera talked with his hands and shoulders, sparkling into animation.  “Mr. Gordon distrusts me.  So?  Am I not right?  He perhaps mistakes me for what you call a—­a pettifogger, is it not?  I do assure to the contrary.  The blood of the Pesquieras is of the bluest Castilian.”

“Fine!  I’ll take your word for it, Don Manuel.  And I don’t distrust you at all.  But here’s the point.  I’m a plain American business man.  I don’t buy and I don’t sell without first investigating a proposition submitted to me.  I’m from Missouri.”

“Oh, indeed!  From St. Louis perhaps.  I went to school there when I was a boy.”

Gordon laughed.  “I was speaking in metaphor, Don Manuel.  What I mean is that I’ll have to be shown.  No pig-in-a-poke business for me.”

“Exactly.  Most precisely.  Have I not traveled from New Mexico up this steep roof of the continent merely to explain how matters stand?  Valencia Valdes is the true and rightful heiress of the valley.  She is everywhere so recognize’ and accept’ by the peons.”

The miner’s indolent eye rested casually upon his guest.  “Married?”

“I have not that felicitation,” replied the Spaniard.

“It was the lady I meant.”

“Pardon.  No man has yet been so fortunate to win the senorita”

“I reckon it’s not for want of trying, since the heiress is so beautiful.  There’s always plenty of willing lads to take over the job of prince regent under such circumstances.”

The spine of the New Mexican stiffened ever so slightly.  “Senorita Valdes is princess of the Rio Chama valley.  Her dependents understan’ she is of a differen’ caste, a descendant of the great and renowned Don Alvaro of Castile.”

“Don’t think I know the gentleman.  Who was he?” asked Gordon genially, offering his guest a cigar.