But skepticism aroused Blaze’s indignation.  With elaborate sarcasm he retorted:  “I reckon that’s why my best team of mules run away and dragged me through a ten-acre patch of grass burrs—­on my belly, eh?  It’s a wonder I wasn’t killed.  I reckon I smoked so much that I give a tobacco heart to the best three-year-old bull in my pasture!  Well, I smoked him to death, all right.  Probably it was nicotine poisonin’ that killed twenty acres of my cotton, too; and maybe if I’d cut out Bull Durham I’d have floated that bond issue on the irrigation ditch.  But I was wedded to cigarettes, so my banks are closin’ down on me.  Sure!  That’s what a man gets for smokin’.”

“And do you attribute all these misfortunes to Paloma’s dressmaker?”

The man nodded gloomily.  “That ain’t half!  Everything goes wrong.  I’m scared to pack a weapon for fear I’ll injure myself.  Why, I’ve carried a bowie-knife in my bootleg ever since I was a babe in arms, you might say; but the other day I jabbed myself with it and nearly got blood-poisonin’.  The very first time I ever laid eyes on this man and his wife a great misfortune overtook me, and ever since they come to Jonesville I’ve had a close squeeze to make a live of it.  This fellow Strange, with his fortune-tellin’ and his charms and his conjures, has hocus-pocussed the whole neighborhood.  He’s gettin’ rich off of the Mexicans.  He knows more secrets than a priest; he tells ’em whether their sweethearts love ‘em, whether a child is goin’ to be a boy or a girl, and how to invest their money.”

“He is nothing more than a circus fakir, Mr. Jones.”

“Yes’m!  Just the same, these Greasers’d vote him into the legislature if he asked ’em.  Why, he knows who fetched back Ricardo Guzman’s body!  He told me so.”

“Really?” Alaire looked up quickly, then the smile left her face.  After a moment she said, “Perhaps he could tell me something that I want to know?”

“Now don’t you get him started,” Blaze cautioned, hastily, “or he’ll put a spell on you like he did on me.”

“I want to know what Ed had to do with the Guzman affair.”

Blaze shook his head slowly.  “Well, he’s mixed up somehow with Lewis.  Dave thinks Tad was at the bottom of the killin’, and he hoped to prove it on him; but our government won’t do anything, and he’s stumped for the time bein’.  I don’t know any more about Ed’s dealin’s than you do, Miz Austin:  all I know is that I got a serpent in my household and I can’t get shed of her.  I’ve got a lapful of troubles of my own.  I’ve ordered Paloma to let that woman go, but, pshaw!  It’s like a bowlegged man drivin’ a shoat—­ there ain’t any headin’ Paloma off when her mind’s made up.  You mark what I say, that female spider’ll sew venom into those dresses.  I never seen a woman with a mustache that was any good.  Look here!” Blaze drew a well-thumbed pack of playing-cards from his pocket.  “Shuffle ’em, and I’ll prove what I say.  If I don’t turn up a dark woman three times out of five I’ll eat that saddle-blanket, dry.”