“You didn’t know him that day he and I clashed at the ford,” Lee suggested.

“Oh, no.  Our meeting came about one afternoon about a week afterward.  He overtook us on the road a mile or so away from here and politely offered to bring us home in his car; we were walking and couldn’t very well refuse his courtesy, and then he asked to call and Ruth at once gave him permission, and that’s the way it came about.  But I thought it wise to draw the line at going off miles and miles with him to see ruins.  Of course, Ruth hasn’t any uncle to consider, but uncle or no uncle I should have drawn the line just the same.”

“A colour line, eh?” Lee asked, with a lift of his brows.

“Yes, that’s it, though I hesitated to put it in just those words,” she agreed, with a nod, while both her lips and her blue eyes smiled at him in amusement.  “Really, Mexicans are of different blood and race, you know, and I feel the—­gulf.  That probably sounds foolish and ridiculous, still I can’t help the feeling.  When I look at a man like Charlie Menocal, I see the Mexican strain uppermost even if his mother was white; and I think what strange, savage, unguessed traits may lurk in his blood from a long time back; and I shiver.  One dare not say they have ceased.  There may be forces at work in his soul that are inherited from the very tribesmen who dwelt in that pueblo ages ago, whose ruins he and Ruth have gone to see.  Who knows?  And I’m never able to rid myself of the feeling that such forces exist in him and his kind.”

The engineer thrust his shovel into the earth and seated himself beside the girl.

“Nor I,” said he.  “And I suppose that feeling will remain between persons of different races as long as the races themselves last.  Those who ignore or deny it are simply blind.  Why, look, there’s antipathy between even white men of different nationalities!  So what else is to be expected when the question is one of race and colour?  Nor will one or two generations change what is infused in blood and sinew.”

“Now, that’s what uncle says,” Imogene Martin declared, “and asserts that’s the reason why Mexicans born and raised here are in sympathy with those across the border in any trouble Mexico has with our country.”  Her face all at once became amused.  “He says craniums were shaped long before governments.”

Bryant laughed on hearing that concise summing up of the case.  And then they continued to talk of this and other subjects, while Dave Morris drew near and silently drank in the conversation, most of which passed above his head.  As for the engineer, he found in his companion a peculiar charm that he never would have suspected from their first meeting at the ford; a pleasure begotten of a quick intelligence and a keen, trained mind.

“I’ve delayed you in your work,” she exclaimed, at length.

“Except to throw out a few shovelfuls of dirt, and that will take but a moment.  I was done.  I didn’t sit down until it was practically put in shape.  I hope we shall have another talk soon; this one has been a great treat for me.  Let me help you up.”