“Oh! very well, then, William, I will give you a wagon, with two yellow ponies, to go down and get her; but I don’t want you to come back to Bavicora with an empty wagon.”
“No, sah; I won’t, sah,” pleasedly responded the lover.
“Does that suit you, then?” asked the patron.
“Yes, sah; but, sah, wonder, sah, might I have the two old whites?”
“All right! You can have the two old white ponies;” and, after a pause, “I will give you that old adobe up in La Pinta, and two speckled steers; and I don’t want you to come down to the ranch except on baile nights, and I want you to slide in then just as quiet as any other outsider,” said the patron, who was testing William’s loyalty to the girl.
“All right! I’ll do that.”
“William, do you know that no true Mexican girl will marry a man who don’t know how to ride a charger?” continued the patron, after a while.
“Yes; I’s been thinking of dat; but dar’s dat Timborello, he’s a good horse what a man can ’pend on,” replied William, as he scoured at the pan in a very wearing way.
“He’s yours, William; and now all you have got to do is to win the girl.”
After that William was as gay as a robin in the spring; and as I write this I suppose William is riding over the pass in the mountains, sitting on a board across his wagon, with his Mexican bride by his side, singing out between the puffs of his black pipe, “Go on, dar, you muchacos; specks we ever get to Bavicora dis yar gait?”