A Daughter of the Dons Part 17

"Much obliged, but I can't use it. As soon as I've tanned his hide I'm through with Master Pedro," returned the miner carelessly.

He was turning away when Pablo stopped him. The musical voice was low and clear. "Senor Gordon understands then. Pedro will pay. He will endure shot for shot if the Senor wishes it. But no man living shall lay a whip upon him."

Gordon shrugged his shoulders. "We shall see, my friend. The first time I meet him after his leg is all right Master Pedro gets the licking he needs."

"You are warned, _senor_."

d.i.c.k nodded and walked away, humming a song lightly.

The black eyes of the Mexicans followed him as long as he was in sight.

A pa.s.sionate hatred burned in those of the elder brother. Those of Pedro were full of a wistful misery. With all his heart he admired this man whom he had yesterday tried to kill, who had to-day saved his life, and in the next breath promised him a thrashing.

He gave him a grudging hero-worship, even while he hated him; for the man trod the world with the splendor of a young G.o.d, and yet was an enemy of the young mistress to whom he owed his full devotion. Pedro's mind was made up.

If this Gordon laid a whip on him, he would drive a knife into his heart.

CHAPTER IX

OF DON MANUEL AND MOONLIGHT

Don Manuel sat curled up in one of the deep window-seats of the living room at the Valdes home, and lifted his clear tenor softly in an old Spanish love-song to the accompaniment of the strumming of a guitar.

It is possible that the young Spaniard sang the serenade impersonally, as much to the elderly duenna who slumbered placidly on the other side of the fireplace as to his lovely young hostess. But his eyes told another story. They strayed continuously toward that slim, gracious figure sitting in the fireglow with a piece of embroidery in the long fingers.

He could look at her the more ardently because she was not looking at him. The fringes of her lids were downcast to the dusky cheeks, the better to examine the work upon which she was engaged.

Don Manuel felt the hour propitious. It was impossible for him not to feel that in the past weeks somehow he had lost touch with her.

Something had come between them; some new interest that threatened his influence.

But to-night he had again woven the spell of romance around her. As she sat there, a sweet shadowy form touched to indistinctness by the soft dusk, he knew her gallant heart had gone with him in the Castilian battle song he had sung, had remained with him in the transition to the more tender note of love.

He rose, thumbed a chord or two, then set his guitar down softly. For a time he looked out into the valley swimming in a silvery light, and under its spell the longing in him came to words.

"It is a night of nights, my cousin. Is it not that a house is a prison in such an hour? Let us forth."

So forth they fared to the porch, and from the porch to the sentinel rock which rose like a needle from the summit of a neighboring hill.

Across the sea of silver they looked to the violet mountains, soft and featureless in the lowered lights of evening, and both of them felt it earth's hour of supreme beauty.

"It is good to live--and to know this," she said at last softly.

"It is good to live and, best of all, to know you," he made answer slowly.

She did not turn from the hills, made no slightest sign that she had heard; but to herself she was saving: "It has come."

While he pleaded his cause pa.s.sionately, with all the ardor of hot-blooded Spain, the girl heard only with her ears. She was searching her heart for the answer to the question she asked of it:

"_Is this the man?_"

A month ago she might have found her answer easier; but she felt that in some subtle, intangible way she was not the same girl as the Valencia Valdes she had known then. Something new had come into her life; something that at times exalted her and seemed to make life's currents sweep with more abandon.

She was at a loss to know what it meant; but, though she would not confess it even to herself, she was aware that the American was the stimulating cause. He was her enemy, and she detested him; and, in the same breath with which she would tell herself this, would come that warm beat of exultant blood she had never known till lately.

With all his ardor, Don Manuel never quickened her pulses. She liked him, understood him, appreciated his value. He was certainly very handsome, and, without doubt, a brave, courteous gentleman of her own set with whom she ought to be happy if she loved him. Ah! If she knew what love were.

So, when the torrent of Pesquiera's speech was for the moment dammed, she could only say:

"I don't know, Manuel."

Confidently he explained away her uncertainty:

"A maiden's love is retiring, shy, like the first flowers of the spring.

She doubts it, fears it, hides it, my beloved, like----"

He was just swimming into his vocal stride when she cut him short decisively:

"It isn't that way with me, Manuel. I should tell you if I knew. Tell me what love is, my cousin, and I may find an answer."

He was off again in another lover's rhapsody. This time there was a smile almost of amus.e.m.e.nt in her eyes as she listened.

"If it is like that, I don't think I love you, Manuel. I don't think poetry about you, and I don't dream about you. Life isn't a desert when you are away, though I like having you here. I don't believe I care for you that way, not if love is what the poets and my cousin Manuel say it is."

Her eyes had been fixed absently now and again on an approaching wagon.

It pa.s.sed on the road below them, and she saw, as she looked down, that her _vaquero_ Pedro lay in the bottom of it upon some hay.

"What is the matter? Are you hurt?" she called down.

The lad who was driving looked up, and flashed a row of white teeth in a smile of rea.s.surance to his mistress.

"It is Pedro, _dona_. He tried to ride that horse Teddy, and it threw him. Before it could kill him, the _Americano_ jumped in and saved his life."

"What American?" she asked quickly: but already she knew by the swift beating of her heart.

"Senor Muir; the devil fly away with him," replied the boy loyally.

Already his mistress was descending toward him with her sure stride, Don Manuel and his suit forgotten in the interest of this new development of the feud. She made the boy go over the tale minutely, asking questions sometimes when she wanted fuller details.

Meanwhile, Manuel Pesquiera waited, fuming. Most certainly this fellow Gordon was very much in the way. Jealousy began to add its sting to the other reasons good for hastening his revenge.

When Valencia turned again to her cousin her eyes were starry.

"He is brave--this man. Is he not?" she cried.

It happened that Don Manuel, too, was a rider in a thousand. He thought that Fate had been unkind to refuse him this chance his enemy had found.

But Pesquiera was a gentleman, and his answer came ungrudgingly: