"That brute shall be shot before he's an hour older," came the surly declaration at last, as Montoro knelt on the stone pavement soothing the animal back into good temper. At the sharp announcement he looked up quickly.
"Then you shall shoot him through me," he said passionately, "as you struck me just now instead of him. He is my only friend out here, and we will live or die together."
Don Alonzo shook himself irritably. He was good-hearted enough if over-indulgent parents in the first instance, and superabundant good fortune since, had not rather spoilt him. Besides, four years' sojourn on the island of Hispaniola had not tended to teach regard for any life but his own; that he esteemed at quite a high enough rate, and he answered Montoro now with angry remonstrance—
"It is all very fine to talk heroics, youngster; but thinkest thou that I am going to be browbeaten into keeping my own dog, to stand in danger of being mauled by it any time its tempers up, as if I were a wretched native!"
Montoro stood up and folded his arms.
"Neither you nor any other man, Indian or European, shall suffer from Doffs teeth. Or, if perchance that sounds too proud a boast, for the first human being that Don injures he shall die. He shall be as a lamb to you now—see—hold out your hand."
With some scarcely-disguised trepidation Alonzo obeyed. Don cast a beseeching glance of remonstrance at his friend; but instead of any encouragement to rejection of the offered fellowship, he got a grave shake of the head; and with a very crestfallen aspect he rose, walked dolefully along the verandah, and put his paw into the outstretched hand, and looked up with mute appeal for forgiveness.
Don Alonzo was wise enough to seal the new compact with a freely-generous gift of more of the coveted grapes. If Montoro for Don, and Don for himself, would engage that Don Alonzo should never feel the sharpness of that animal's teeth, his owner was only too willing that it should live. For it was quite the fashion now to use these powerful dogs out in the new world, not only as terrible aids in battle against the poor, half-defenceless Indians, but also to hunt down the miserable, wholly-defenceless slaves who sometimes dared to run away to die in peace in their native forests, instead of beneath the short-sighted, as well as brutal, taskmaster's lash.
The young Diego had declared that Don should never be so employed, but that declaration Don Alonzo comfortably decided in his own mind was all nonsense. He himself had had qualms about the treatment of the natives when he first came out, but he had long since got rid of all such inconvenient scruples; and so of course would this new arrival get speedily rid of his. Every one did, with the exception of that impracticable idiot of a neighbour of his, that young fellow Las Casas, who had come out from Spain with his head so full of theories and bookish ideas that he had no room in it for common sense.