“It ess good now, señor, for you to come. Don Jake say for you help with those evil ones.”
The instant he stepped outside the situation explained itself. Warned, first by the firing, then by women who came running out to meet them, “Don” Jake and Sliver had quietly made their dispositions. At the back gate Sliver and two ancianos now stood with leveled rifles. Two more poked deadly snouts over the low patio wall, Lee and Jake behind them. And now they had leadership the women were swarming like brown hornets out of the adobes, brandishing knives, cleavers, machetes, a hysterical, dangerous mob.
In accordance with their outlaw tactics, Jake and Sliver had both aimed at the leader, and, cut off from escape, with still another enemy behind him, he had taken the hint. Arms reversed, rifle muzzle resting on the ground, he stood with his four companions. To give them their due, they showed no fear. Half or whole bandit, ugly, black-browed, one of them villainously pock-marked, the others with unhealthy erupted skins, they rolled cigarettes while urging the excited women to greater frenzy with evil jokes.
“Drive back those women!” Jake called the moment Gordon appeared. “Then bring the captain, or colonel, or general, whichever is what, over here.”
Nodding in reply to Gordon’s gesture, the leader followed him across the compound. Of medium height, well formed, features aquiline and cleanly cut, he was a perfect specimen of that tailor-made, detestably handsome Mexican middle-class type. Conceit, insufferable vanity, bristled at the ends of his curved mustache. How it could be associated with such reckless hardihood as he now displayed must remain one of Nature’s mysteries, for, entering the patio, he took a seat under the portales and addressed Jake with an authoritative air:
“Now, señor, will you please explain why you have attacked a command of General Valles?”
“Yes, if you will explain, on your part, why a command of General Valles attacked my people!”
It was Lee that answered. She was wearing her man’s riding-clothes, and the man’s surprise when she spoke told that he had taken her for a boy. Now, with exaggerated courtesy that was far more offensive than his first hardy insolence, he sprang up and offered her his chair.
“I did not know”—his bold glance wandered over her costume—“you will pardon me, señorita?”
Though she flushed, Lee returned the stare. It was not the first time that revolutionists had come with “requisitions” to Los Arboles. She answered from experience.