"Ay, los Ah-paches!" sighed Marcelina, looking wistfully up the trail. "No ai Ah-paches in mountains now, Babe?"
"No, Marcelina," soothed Angy, "all gone now. Soldiers watch 'em—San Carlos."
"Que malo, los Indios!" shuddered Marcelina. "I am afraid—quien sabe?—who can tell?—I am afraid some bad men shall keel—ah, when say Paycos, he will come?"
"'I'll come a-runnin'—watch for my dust'—that's all he wrote when I told him you was home. Can't you see no dust nor nothin'?"
"There is leetle smoke, like camp-fire, up the valley—and Creet's vaqueros come home down Tonto trail. Pretty soon sundown—nobody come."
Angevine Thorne stepped through the doorway and, shading his bloodshot eyes with a grimy hand, gazed long at the column of thin smoke against the northern sky. "Like as not some one is brandin' an orejano" he said, half to himself. "Might even be Pecos, makin' a signal fire. Hey, look at them bloody cowboys, ridin' in on it! Look at 'em go down that arroyo; will you? Say—I hope—"
"Hope what?"
"Well, I hope Pecos don't come across none of them Spectacle cows on the way in—that's all."
"Ahh, Paycos weel be mad—he weel—Mira! Look, look!"