“It’s too horrible!” said Lucia; and she turned away.

“Ees life too horrible?” Pancho wanted to know.

“I never knew life was like that!” she said.

“Because you ’ave never really lived,” the bandit explained.  “Because you ’ave been always protect by ozzers.  I kill only men.  And only evil men.  And when I kill evil man, it make me very ’appy.  For I ’ave did a good deed.”  His simple philosophy pleased him.

“But who decides whether a man is good or evil’”

“I do!” answered Lopez, quick as a flash, and wondering how she could have asked so stupid a question.

“Oh, do let me pour some more coffee for you!” Angela begged.

“If you wish,” Lopez said, indifferently.  It mattered little to him now who waited upon him.  His inner man had been partially satisfied.  He leaned back in his chair, at peace with all the world.  One spurred and booted foot was on the table.

“Oh, thank you!” Angela was all smiles.  She was making headway with this evil man.  “Thank you so much,” she followed up, and, standing sweetly at his left, she poured the brown stuff into his cup.  “Lovely weather, isn’t it?” she remarked.  The cook took the pot from her, and went back to the kitchen with it.

“Si,” Lopez said.  “Sit down.  Sit down.”  Angela thought of course he was speaking to her, and being kind to her because of her girlish attentions.  So she promptly seated herself.  “No, not you!” Pancho said roughly, putting six spoons of sugar in this second cup.  “You, I mean,” indicating Lucia once more.  Angela pouted, and turned her back on this bad, bad man.  Pancho never even noticed her.  The more opulent beauty of Lucia appealed to the sensuous in him.  “You,” he repeated.  “Tell me, senora, ’ave you never been to a free country?”

Lucia was surprised at his question.

“A free country?” she said.

“Yes; like Mexico, for instance.”

“Don’t you call the United States a free country?” Lucia asked him.

He almost roared his head off.  “The United—­Bah!  Ees the most unfree country what is.  Every man, every woman, is slave—­slave to law, slave to custom, slave to everysing.  You get up such time; eat such time,” his hands went out in Latin frenzy.  “Every day you work such time, every night go to bed such time.  And, Madre di Dios, every week you take bath such time!” This was, to him, the ultimate joke.  “An’ you call it a free country!  Ees only one free country.  Ees one in which man does as she damn please.  Like Mexico!” he ended.

The women were astounded.  They had always thought of Mexico as a land of rough-and-tumble, comic-opera revolutions; a place where one must forever be on the lookout for trouble; where robbers were rife and the days were nothing but a chain of abominations.  A sunny, beautiful country, maybe; but no place for a God-fearing American citizen to settle.  Why, they would as soon commit murder in Mexico as go to market.