“Pepe’s falling off in his tobacco,” said Brace.  “I think I’ll have to try some other Fonda.”

“How’s Banks getting on with his crop?” asked Crosby.  “You know he was going to revolutionize the business, and cut out Cuba on that hillside.”

“Oh, the usual luck!  He couldn’t get proper cultivators, and the Injins wouldn’t work regular.  I must try and get hold of some of the Comandante’s stock; but I’m out of favor with the old man since Winslow and I wrecked that fishing-boat on the rocks off yonder.  He always believed we were trying to run off, like Captain Bunker.  That’s why he stopped our shipbuilding, I really believe.”

“All the same, we might have had it built and ready now but for our laziness.  We might have worked on it nights without their knowing it, and slipped off some morning in the fog.”

“And we wouldn’t have got one of the women to go with us!  If we are getting shiftless here—­and I don’t say we’re not—­these women have just planted themselves and have taken root.  But that ain’t all:  there’s the influence of that infernal sneak Hurlstone!  He’s set the Comandante against us, you know; he, and the priest, the Comandante, and Nelly Keene make up the real Council of Todos Santos.  Between them they’ve shoved out the poor little Alcalde, who’s ready to give up everything to dance attendance on Mrs. Brimmer.  They run the whole concern, and they give out that it’s owing to them that we’re given parole of the town, and the privilege of spending our money and working these mines.  Who’d have thought that sneak Hurlstone would have played his cards so well?  It makes me regularly sick to hear him called ‘Don Diego.’”

“Yet you’re mightily tickled when that black-eyed sister of the Alcalde calls you ‘Don Carlos,’” said Crosby, yawning.

“Dona Isabel,” said Brace, with some empressement, “is a lady of position, and these are only her national courtesies.”

“She just worships Miss Keene, and I reckon she knows by this time all about your old attentions to her friend,” said Crosby, with lazy mischief.

“My attentions to Miss Keene were simply those of an ordinary acquaintance, and were never as strongly marked as yours to Mrs. Brimmer.”

“Who has deserted me as Miss Keene did you,” rejoined Crosby.

Brace’s quick color had risen again, and he would have made some sharp retort, but the jingling of spurs caught his ear.  They both turned quickly, and saw Banks approaching.  He was dressed as a vaquero, but with his companions’ like exaggeration of detail; yet, while his spurs were enormous, and his sombrero unusually expansive, he still clung to his high shirt-collars and accurately tied check cravat.

“Well?” he said, approaching them.

“Well?” said Crosby.

“Well?” repeated Brace.

After this national salutation, the three Americans regarded each other silently.