"I think you're to be trusted, so I'll tell you a secret," she remarked, smiling. "Charlie Menocal doesn't make a 'hit' with me, either. When you referred to the ford, I could scarcely keep my face straight; and my feeling ill this afternoon, though partly true, was also partly manufactured, because I didn't want to go to those old ruins with him. I don't care for men like him especially. I share the feeling of my uncle in Kennard—"
"You have an uncle there? I thought you were from the East."
"I am; from Ohio. But I've an uncle and aunt living in Kennard, which is the reason Ruth and I came to this section for homesteads. Ruth was crazy to take up a claim, having read how easily one is acquired, while my health was not very good and the doctor at home thought it would be improved by being in the open in a high altitude. Uncle said I'd better stay with him and aunt, but I knew how terribly disappointed Ruth would be if I did, because she couldn't homestead alone. So uncle declared that if homesteaders we had to be, then we must locate near him where he could have me under his eye, so to speak. I myself am not taking this claim business very seriously. And now uncle, who once had some controversy with the elder Menocal, wouldn't be very well pleased if he knew the son was making calls on us."
"So others besides myself have trouble with the Menocals," Bryant stated.
"Apparently. I don't know what this particular difficulty was about, but uncle is president of a bank in Kennard and so it may have been some financial matter. Or it may have been over politics; both of them mix in that. Anyway, he doesn't think highly of the elder Menocal, and has no use at all for the younger; so I know he would be vexed at Ruth and me for receiving this Charlie."
"You didn't know him that day he and I clashed at the ford," Lee suggested.
"Oh, no. Our meeting came about one afternoon about a week afterward. He overtook us on the road a mile or so away from here and politely offered to bring us home in his car; we were walking and couldn't very well refuse his courtesy, and then he asked to call and Ruth at once gave him permission, and that's the way it came about. But I thought it wise to draw the line at going off miles and miles with him to see ruins. Of course, Ruth hasn't any uncle to consider, but uncle or no uncle I should have drawn the line just the same."
"A colour line, eh?" Lee asked, with a lift of his brows.
"Yes, that's it, though I hesitated to put it in just those words," she agreed, with a nod, while both her lips and her blue eyes smiled at him in amusement. "Really, Mexicans are of different blood and race, you know, and I feel the—gulf. That probably sounds foolish and ridiculous, still I can't help the feeling. When I look at a man like Charlie Menocal, I see the Mexican strain uppermost even if his mother was white; and I think what strange, savage, unguessed traits may lurk in his blood from a long time back; and I shiver. One dare not say they have ceased. There may be forces at work in his soul that are inherited from the very tribesmen who dwelt in that pueblo ages ago, whose ruins he and Ruth have gone to see. Who knows? And I'm never able to rid myself of the feeling that such forces exist in him and his kind."
The engineer thrust his shovel into the earth and seated himself beside the girl.