“We’re with you, old hoss,” they cried, and trooped into the court.
First thing, they found that their guns had vanished.
Freegift scratched his shaggy head.
“Now, a pretty trick. We’re disarmed. They come it over us proper, I say.”
Spanish soldiers were passing to and fro. Some stared, some laughed, but nobody offered an explanation or seemed to understand the questions.
“That wasn’t in the bargain, was it?” Alex Roy demanded. “The cap’n’ll have a word or two of the right kind ready, when he learns. Anyhow, we’ll soon find out whether we’re prisoners as well. Come on.”
The gate at the entrance to the court was open. The guard there did not stop them. They had scarcely stepped out, to the square, when loitering soldiers and civilians, chatting with women enveloped in black shawls, welcomed them in Spanish and beckoned to them, and acted eager to show them around.
“‘Buenas noches,’ is it? ‘Good evenin’ to ye,’” spoke Freegift. “I expect there’ll be no harm in loosenin’ up a bit. So fare as you like, boys, an’ have a care. I’m off. Who’s with me?”
They trooped gaily away, escorted by their new Santa Fean friends. Stub stuck to Freegift, for a time; but every little while the men had to stop, and drink wine offered to them at the shops and even at the houses near by; so, tiring of this, he fell behind, to make the rounds on his own account and see what he chose to see.
He was crossing the bare, hard-baked square, or plaza as they called it, to take another look at the strings of Indian ears festooned on the front of the Governor’s Palace, when through the gathering dusk somebody hailed him.