"This is it: we will play, if you like for the share of the gold we shall receive when we reach the placer."
"Done!" the ranchero shouted enthusiastically.
"Well," the monk said, drawing from his pocket a pack of cards no less dirty than the others, "we can at any rate kill time."
"What! You have cards too?" the ranchero remarked.
"Yes, and quite new, as you see." Andrés bowed with an air of conviction.
The game began at once, and soon the two men were completely absorbed in the combinations of the seis de copas, the as de bastos, the dos de oro, and the cuatro d'espadas. The monk, who had no necessity to feign at this moment, as he was in the company of a man thoroughly acquainted with him, yielded frenziedly to his ruling passion. In Mexico, and throughout Spanish America, the angelus rings at sunset. In those countries, where there is no twilight, night arrives without transition, so that ere the bell has done tinkling the gloom is dense. At the last stroke of the angelus the game ceased, as if by common agreement between the two men, and they threw their cards on the table.
Although Garote was a passed master in trickery, and had displayed all his science, he found in the monk so skilful an adversary that, after more than three hours of an obstinate struggle, they both found themselves as little advanced as at the outset. The monk, however, on coming to the rancho, had an object which Red Cedar was far from suspecting.
Fray Ambrosio rested his arms on the table, bent his body slightly forward, and while carelessly playing with the cards, which he amused himself by sorting, he said to the ranchero, as he fixed a scrutinising glance upon him,—
"Shall we talk a little, Don Andrés?"
"Willingly," the latter replied, who had partly risen, but now fell back on his chair.