“Of course,” replied Polly, with the faith of the American girl in the male of the species. “They have a little coal train that runs to Conejo and he’ll probably come in on that.”
“I think you must be Señorita Street?” mused the young man.
“Oh,” Polly dimpled pleasantly. “You know Bob then?”
Juan Pachuca’s dark eyes smiled. “Not exactly—but I have met him. Me, I have a place south of Conejo—quite a long way—I am what you might call a long-distance neighbor. My name is Pachuca—Juan Pachuca.”
“I see. Are you in the mining business, too?”
“Not now. Oh, I have mining property, but further south. My people live in Mexico City. In Sonora I have a small ranch.”
“You speak English rather wonderfully, you know, señor,” said the girl. “But more like an Englishman than an American.”
“It is very likely. My sister—she is much older than I—married an Englishman, and her children had English governesses. When I was young I had my lessons with them.”
So from one thing to another the conversation ran, very much as it does with two young people of any nationalities, granted a common language. Polly talked a good deal about Bob. Juan Pachuca seemed interested in all the details that she could give him about the mine. His manner was very respectful. If he had not met many American girls he had evidently heard much about them, for he did not seem to misunderstand the situation as many Latins would have done. Before the girl had realized it the two hours were over and the little engine reappeared.
Conejo should, I believe, be called a town. The people who live in it always dignify it by that name and they probably have a reason for so doing. To one holding advanced ideas as to towns, it seems at a first glance to be only a collection of pinkish looking adobes which on inspection turn out to be a church, a store, a jail, a saloon, a hotel—at which no one stays who has a friend to take him in—and some private houses. It is Juarez without the bull ring, the racetrack or the gambling places.