Pete blinked and hesitated.  “Of my folks—­back there,” he said.

Boca darted from him as her mother called her to help set the table.  Pete’s lips were drawn in a queer line.  He had no folks “back there”—­or anywhere.  “It was her eyes made me feel that way,” he thought.  And, “Doggone it—­I’m livin’—­anyhow.”

From the general conversation at the table that evening Pete gathered that queer visitors came to this place frequently.  It was a kind of isolated, halfway house between the border and Showdown.  He heard the name of “Scar-Face,” “White-Eye,” “Sonora Jim,” “Tio Verdugo,” a rare assortment of border vagabonds known by name to the cowboys of the high country.  The Spider was frequently mentioned.  It was evident that he had some peculiar influence over the Flores household, from the respectful manner in which his name was received by the whole family.  And Pete, unfamiliar with the goings and comings of those men, their quarrels, friendships, and sinister escapades, ate and listened in silence, realizing that he too had earned a tentative place among them.  He found himself listening with keen interest to Malvey’s account of a machine-gun duel between two white men,—­renegades and leaders in opposing factions below the border,—­and how one of them, shot through and through, stuck to his gun until he had swept the plaza of enemy sharp-shooters and had then crawled on hands and knees to the other machine gun, killed its wounded operator with a six-shooter, and turned the machine gun on his fleeing foes, shooting until the Mexicans of his own company had taken courage enough to return and rescue him.  “And he’s in El Paso now,” concluded Malvey, “at the hospital.  He writ to The Spider for money—­and The Spider sure sent it to him.”

“Who was he fightin’ for?” queried Pete, interested in spite of himself.

“Fightin’ for?  For hisself!  Because he likes the game.  You don’t want to git the idea that any white man is down there fightin’ just to help a lot of dirty Greasers—­on either side of the scrap.”

A quick and significant glance shot from Boca’s eyes to her mother’s.  Old Flores ate stolidly.  If he had heard he showed no evidence of it.

“‘Bull’ Malvey!  A darn good name for him,” thought Pete.  And he felt a strange sense of shame at being in his company.  He wondered if Flores were afraid of Malvey or simply indifferent to his raw talk.  And Pete—­who had never gone out of his way to make a friend—­decided to be as careful of what he said as Malvey was careless.  Pete had never lacked nerve, but he was endowed with considerable caution—­a fact that The Spider had realized and so had considered him worth the trouble of hiding—­as an experiment.