"As to leading them," said Oliver, eating a tortilla smeared with marmalade with the gusto of a schoolboy, "I shall rather git on behind them; and how they will charge when they know I shall shoot the first that turns back on my toes!"
"If this is North American persuasion," began Gladsden, laughing.
"Jest another time. In brief, don Olivero will take his five score sham soldiers out of the secret gate in the corral which, by the way, you may not know, every rich landed proprietor has in order in a country of revolution; and he will go and ambush a quarter of a league away. Meanwhile, we shall establish our watches so as not to be taken by surprise. If the ambuscade be discovered, don Olivero will signal me by two rockets—red and white. If we, however, as is more likely, are first attacked, we shall notify him, in await, by sending up two rockets—white and red. Then will he lead, or follow his chivalry, and take the red rabble in the rear as they envelope my farm. They will imagine the lancers and dragoons have come from Ures or Hermosillo, and recoil on our enclosure. We will rally out, and we'll mince them up into bits as fine as that poor Matasiete was chewed by the sharks of the Gulf of California; eh, you remember him, don Jorge?"
"Decidedly! He lives in my remembrance all the more lively, because I cannot have been mistaken in my impression that I saw him only this early morning."
"Saw don Aníbal, as he called himself? Saw the gallant of my late aunt, Josefa Maria—and only this morning! Impossible! You are still dreaming!"
"My friend! As truly as your bullet creased that hooknose, I saw it at the wicket in the door of the Green Ranch Tavern. Don Matasiete, whose garland of names I cannot recall in full, was not entombed in the maw of the tintoreras, but escaped with the loss of a limb. In pleasant allusion to that disaster he is called 'The Dismembered' even now, and he is that One-leg Peter, or Pedrillo el Manco, who, it appears, revives on this frontier all the old tales of rascally doing for which, in former days, he was so famous. What's bred in the blood won't come out with the loss of a limb, you see."
"An enemy like that! So near me, and often! How, then, is it that I have never been injured by him or his band?"
"Really," answered Mr. Gladsden, perplexed, "I am at a loss to enter into the mind of such rascals. Mayhap he is reserving you for a top off to his career of scoundrelism."
The repast being ended, don Benito conducted his old and his new friend to present them to his wife and family.
Neither they nor the other ladies had been informed of the terrible disaster in suspense; and, as far as they were concerned, as well even as some of the younger gentlemen from the neighbourhood, the festival of the Angelito was still proceeding.