“Dear old Bob,” she touched his cheek as she passed him with a light caress and went on into the room beyond to get her dancing slippers.

It was later that evening that Jose began his unceasing importunities to see Pearl dance in the town hall.  A stern and surprised veto of this plan was his immediate answer.  But Jose was the most convincing and plausible of pleaders.

“But, Gallito,” he cried almost piteously, “since Mrs. Nitschkan has watched my manners I have been like an angel.  No more does the camp say that this hill is haunted, you know that.”

“I told you what you’d get if you didn’t stop hootin’ at people who was passin’,” remarked Mrs. Nitschkan, knocking the ashes from her pipe out on the hearth and then carefully refilling it.  “But you’re none so good now that you need brag.  I don’t know that playin’ monkey tricks to frighten folks ain’t just as good a way to put in the time as sittin’ ‘round holdin’ hands with Marthy Thomas.”

“Sadie!” Mrs. Thomas drew forth her handkerchief and prepared to shed the ready tear.  “How you can have the heart to talk so to a woman that ain’t buried her husband twelve months!  Mr. Jose ain’t even thought of takin’ the liberties you sit there accusin’ him of.  If I had a live husband to pertect me, you wouldn’t dare treat me like what you do.  Whenever you miss a shot, or get fooled on a prospect, or get some money won away from you, you come back to our little cabin an’ sit lookin’ at me like you was a wolf an’ talkin’ like you was a she-bear.  And—­and it’s darned hard, that’s what it is.”

“If you were a man, Nitschkan,” Jose drew himself up truculently, “you would indeed answer for such speeches, and you would not have converted me so easily, either.  I have no fear of men.”  This was quite true, he had not, but his eye quailed and drooped before the steady gaze of Mrs. Nitschkan.

“Come, come,” said Gallito peremptorily, “I am glad to see you all each evening about my fireside, but I will have no arguing nor quarreling, understand that.  A man’s house is his castle.”

Jose diplomatically dropped the subject, which did not mean that he had abandoned his plan for one moment.  He merely waited a more convenient season.  His strongest arguments were that it was not an infrequent occurrence for Gallito to entertain guests of his own nationality in his mountain cabin.  “And my hair!” cried Jose pathetically.  “It would be a crown of glory to Nitschkan if she had it; but it is a shame to me, a man, to have to wear it so long.  No one in the camp could possibly know that I have ears.”

Gallito at first absolutely refused to listen to him, but so adroitly did Jose bring up the subject every evening that he began to make some impression on his stern jailer.  He was careful, though, not to mention his hopes until near midnight, when Gallito’s normally harsh mood was greatly softened not only by winning the final game, which Jose invariably permitted now, but also by the mellowing influence of his bland, old cognac.  Then Gallito would embark on an argument, determined to convince Jose of the wild folly of his desire.