Malvey strode forward.

Old Flores dropped the neck of the shattered bottle and stood gazing down at Pete.  “The good wine is gone.  I break the bottle,” said Flores, grinning.

“To hell with the wine!  Let’s pack this young tin-horn out where he won’t be in the way.”

But as Malvey stooped, Boca flung herself in front of him.  “Pig!” she flamed.  She turned furiously on her father, whose vacuous grin faded as she cursed him shrilly for a coward.

Listless and heavy-eyed came Boca’s mother.  Without the slightest trace of emotion she examined Pete’s wound, fetched water and washed it, binding it up with a handkerchief.  Quite as listlessly she spoke to her husband, telling him to leave the wine and go to bed.

Flores mumbled a protest.  Malvey asked him if he let the women run the place.  Boca’s mother turned to Malvey.  “You will go,” she said quietly.  Malvey cursed as he stepped from the room.  He could face Boca’s fury, or face any man in a quarrel, but there was something in the deathlike quietness of the sad-eyed Mexican woman that chilled his blood.  He did not know what would happen if he refused to go—­yet he knew that something would happen.  It was not the first time that Flores’s wife had interfered in quarrels of the border outlaws sojourning at the ranch.  In Showdown men said that she would as soon knife a man as not.  Malvey, who had lived much in Old Mexico, had seen women use the knife.

He went without a word.  Boca heard him speak sharply to his horse, as she and her mother lifted Pete and carried him to the bedroom.

CHAPTER XXI

BOCA DULZURA

Just before dawn Pete became conscious that some one was sitting near him and occasionally bathing his head with cool water.  He tried to sit up.  A slender hand pushed him gently back.  “It is good that you rest,” said a voice.  The room was dark—­he could not see—­but he knew that Boca was there and he felt uncomfortable.  He was not accustomed to being waited upon, especially by a woman.

“Where’s Malvey?” he asked.

“I do not know.  He is gone.”

Again Pete tried to sit up, but sank back as a shower of fiery dots whirled before his eyes.  He realized that he had been hit pretty hard—­that he could do nothing but keep still just then.  The hot pain subsided as the wet cloth again touched his forehead and he drifted to sleep.  When he awakened at midday he was alone.

He rose, and steadying himself along the wall, finally reached the doorway.  Old Flores was working in the distant garden-patch.  Beyond him, Boca and her mother were pulling beans.  Pete stepped out dizzily and glanced toward the corral.  His horse was not there.