“Ten thousand pardons, Little Un, but it is false!”
“Why, Sutro, what do you mean? Isn’t it fine to be picture-y? I’m sure the stranger thought so, for he noticed everything about you,—your buckskin leggings, your sombrero, your big saddle, your lariat, and all. He said you were a most int’resting kind of a ‘type,’ and an ‘old Californian,’ and so on. I didn’t like the ‘old’ part of the talk, though, ’cause if you have to be called old, I’d rather do it myself, wouldn’t I?”
Sutro vouchsafed no reply. His brow had grown moody, and his movements betokened anger; for he picked up the blanket, and folded it with unusual precision, and, if it were possible, threw his shoulders back more squarely than ever. At that moment, from the snap of his black eyes and the rigidity of his upright figure, he might have been eighteen instead of eighty-five, which was the number of years Father Antonio’s reckoning accorded him.
Steenie became silent, for the one thing she feared was anger; but when the caballero whistled for Mazan´, she puckered her own red lips into a summons for Tito, who answered by a loving neigh and an immediate approach.
Not so the brown mare, Mazan´, to whose sensitive ears Sutro’s whistle had conveyed the information that her master was cross; and when that was the case, it were well that all tender-hearted creatures kept out of his way. So, instead of trotting forward to be mounted, pretty Mazan´ trotted off up the beach, and at a distance of a few rods broke into a wild gallop toward home.
Then Steenie laughed; she couldn’t help it, though she trembled instantly, fearing she had made matters worse.
But no. There was something so merry and infectious about that laugh that doting old Sutro was not the one to withstand its influence; his frown relaxed to a smile. “Well, well, En verdad! Mazan´ knows something after all! For she would be a foolish thing to come back for a beating she did not deserve, would she not, mi niña [my little one]?”
“So I should think, indeed! But what fun! You shall mount with me, and we will chase her. She’ll not stop to think that Tito can run her two to one, will she?”
“No, no!” assented the caballero, vaulting up behind his young favorite, and making ready for use the lariat which had been wound around his waist while he rested; also, for once, accepting without challenge Steenie’s declaration that Tito was the fleeter animal.
Such a race as that was! Save themselves and the fleeing mare, not a moving thing was in sight; for, leaving the mesa bluff and the cañon, they left also the teal and the sand-pipers and the few creeping creatures which lived in the chaparral. To the west glittered the rich-hued Pacific Ocean; before them and behind them lay miles and miles of yellow beach, while far eastward towered the mountains which formed the boundary of the great Santa Felisa rancho.