Rozales was not inclined to take his chief’s view of Byrne’s value to them.  He argued that the man was guilty of disloyalty and therefore a menace.  What he thought, but did not advance as an argument, was of a different nature.  Rozales was filled with rage to think that the newcomer had outwitted him, and beaten him at his own game, and he was jealous, too, of the man’s ascendancy in the esteem of Pesita; but he hid his personal feelings beneath a cloak of seeming acquiescence in his chief’s views, knowing that some day his time would come when he might rid himself of the danger of this obnoxious rival.

“And tomorrow,” continued Pesita, “I am sending him to Cuivaca.  Villa has considerable funds in bank there, and this stranger can learn what I want to know about the size of the detachment holding the town, and the habits of the garrison.”

CHAPTER IX

BARBARA IN MEXICO

The manager of El Orobo Rancho was an American named Grayson.  He was a tall, wiry man whose education had been acquired principally in the cow camps of Texas, where, among other things one does not learn to love nor trust a greaser.  As a result of this early training Grayson was peculiarly unfitted in some respects to manage an American ranch in Mexico; but he was a just man, and so if his vaqueros did not love him, they at least respected him, and everyone who was or possessed the latent characteristics of a wrongdoer feared him.

Perhaps it is not fair to say that Grayson was in any way unfitted for the position he held, since as a matter of fact he was an ideal ranch foreman, and, if the truth be known, the simple fact that he was a gringo would have been sufficient to have won him the hatred of the Mexicans who worked under him—­not in the course of their everyday relations; but when the fires of racial animosity were fanned to flame by some untoward incident upon either side of the border.

Today Grayson was particularly rabid.  The more so because he could not vent his anger upon the cause of it, who was no less a person than his boss.

It seemed incredible to Grayson that any man of intelligence could have conceived and then carried out the fool thing which the boss had just done, which was to have come from the safety of New York City to the hazards of warring Mexico, bringing—­and this was the worst feature of it—­his daughter with him.  And at such a time!  Scarce a day passed without its rumors or reports of new affronts and even atrocities being perpetrated upon American residents of Mexico.  Each day, too, the gravity of these acts increased.  From mere insult they had run of late to assault and even to murder.  Nor was the end in sight.

Pesita had openly sworn to rid Mexico of the gringo—­to kill on sight every American who fell into his hands.  And what could Grayson do in case of a determined attack upon the rancho?  It is true he had a hundred men—­laborers and vaqueros, but scarce a dozen of these were Americans, and the rest would, almost without exception, follow the inclinations of consanguinity in case of trouble.