“Then who else could it be?” demanded the editor impatiently.
“That's jest for the press to find out and expose,” returned the foreman, with a significant glance at the editor's desk. “I reckon that's whar the 'Clarion' ought to come in.”
“In a matter of this kind,” said the editor promptly, “the paper has no business to interfere with a man's statement. The colonel has a perfect right to his own secret—if there is one, which I very much doubt. But,” he added, in laughing recognition of the half reproachful, half humorous discontent on the foreman's face, “what dreadful theory have YOU and the boys got about it—and what do YOU expect to expose?”
“Well,” said the foreman very seriously, “it's jest this: You see, the colonel is mighty sweet on that Spanish woman Ramierez up on the hill yonder. It was her mustang he was ridin' when the row happened near her house.”
“Well?” said the editor, with disconcerting placidity.
“Well,”—hesitated the foreman, “you see, they're a bad lot, those Greasers, especially the Ramierez, her husband.”
The editor knew that the foreman was only echoing the provincial prejudice against this race, which he himself had always combated. Ramierez kept a fonda or hostelry on a small estate,—the last of many leagues formerly owned by the Spanish grantee, his landlord,—and had a wife of some small coquetries and redundant charms. Gambling took place at the fonda, and it was said the common prejudice against the Mexican did not, however, prevent the American from trying to win his money.
“Then you think Ramierez was jealous of the colonel? But in that case he would have knifed him,—Spanish fashion,—and not without a struggle.”
“There's more ways they have o' killin' a man than that; he might hev been dragged off his horse by a lasso and choked,” said the foreman darkly.
The editor had heard of this vaquero method of putting an enemy hors de combat; but it was a clumsy performance for the public road, and the brutality of its manner would have justified the colonel in exposing it.