"The señor is early at his prayers," observed a soft, mocking voice behind him.
Jack dropped the riata and turned, his whole face smiling a welcome. But Teresita was in one of her perverse moods and the mockery was not all in her voice; her eyes were maddeningly full of it as she looked from him to the stretched riata.
"The señor is wise to tell the twists in his riata as I tell my beads—a prayer for each," she cooed. "For truly he will need the prayers, and a riata that will perform miracles of its own accord, if he would fight José with rawhide." There was the little twist of her lips afterward which Jack had come to know well and to recognize as a bull recognizes the red serape of the matador.
"Señor," she added impressively, holding back her hair from blowing across her face and gazing at him wide-eyed, with a wicked assumption of guileless innocence, "at the Mission San José there is a very old and very wise woman. She lives in a tule hut behind the very walls of the Mission, and the Indians go to her by night when dreams have warned them that death threatens. She is a terribly wise old woman, Señor, for she can look into the past and part the curtain which hides the future. For gold will she part it. And for gold will she put the curse or the blessing where curse or blessing is needed most. Go you to the old woman and have her put a blessing upon the riata when it is dressed and you have prayed your prayers upon it, Señor! For five pesos will she bless it and command it to fly straight wherever the señor desires that it shall fly. Then can you meet José and not tremble so that the spur-bells tinkle."
Jack went hot inside of him, but he made his lips smile at the jest; for so do brave men try to make light of torment, whether it be fire or flood or the tongue of the woman they love.
"All right," he said. "And I think I'll have the judges rule that the fight shall be at fifty paces, as I would if we were to fight with pistols." He tried to keep his irritation out of his voice, but there must have been enough to betray him.
For Teresita smiled pleasedly and sent another barb. "It would be wise. For truly, José's equal has never been seen, and caballeros I have known who would swear that José's riata can stretch to fifty paces and more to find its mark."
"Is it anxiety for me that makes you so solicitous?" demanded Jack, speaking low so that the peons could not overhear.
"Perhaps—and perhaps it is pride; for I know well the skill and the bravery of my José." Again the twist of her pretty, pouting lips, blood-red and tempting.
Her José! For just a minute the face of Teresita showed vague to him before his wrathful eyes.