They had entered the house, where a silence ran before them and seemed gradually to begin to diminish the merrymaking clamour.
"Yes," said the priest, with a sigh, "time is fleeting and death cometh as swiftly, and who of us can be certain of having ample opportunity to accomplish his duty—the task which heaven sets unto him?"
The solemnity of the accent deepened a gloom already befalling the guests.
"The padre is right," broke in Oregon Oliver, whose impatience at the loss of time in ceremony was augmenting, "jest let out that you are coming to save the house from the scalper and pison hatchets! What you've had was the blazing (marking a tree with a chop to denote it chosen for felling), the next call, the murderous minded Apaches mean to fell the trunk from the topmost switch to the lowest bough."
All the gentlemen withdrew into a side room, where the priest imparted his tragic intelligence. There was terrible anxiety, since the farming gentlemen had left their homesteads at the mercy of their peons thus denounced as treacherous.
"Well, Señores caballeros," said Benito, "since you look to me, I say with our norteamericano (Oliver) that, under such circumstances, the determination we are driven into is the best, I have four hundred peons on this farm. Of the lot, I can rely on three hundred, for one reason and another. I know the bulk of them as I do my own children. Against the hundred, or near a hundred and fifty, since some off strange plantations have flocked here, ostensibly for the junketing, we can pit my gentlemen friends, our relations. Each of them is the value of five or six wild Indians. You see, gentlemen, I rate you very low! Now you require rest, a change of dress—."
"No, no," said the Englishman and his guide with one breath.
"Pardon me, a short rest is requisite. By that time I shall have made my preparation, and then we may put the finishing touches on our plan of battle."
"And doña Dolores?" queried Mr. Gladsden.
"My daughter has gone to inform her that we have the honour and pleasure, at last," he said, reproachfully, "to see under the roof always bound to shelter him, our foremost of friends and benefactors. After your repose, doña Dolores will have the honour to receive you."