“Sliver’s right.” Jake’s bleak eyes had grown almost soft. “You don’t owe us anything. All that’s bothering us is—”
“—that we kain’t jest see how you’re going to manage,” Bull finished. “Your father’s idea—” He stopped.
Her smooth white brow had drawn up into a thoughtful little frown. “It isn’t practicable. Valles would never permit us to drive horses across the border. We have asked him once before. And if he would—” Her sweeping hand took in the sunlit patio, the brown criadas soft-footing it along the corredor; the compound ablaze with barbaric color; the peonas gossiping in the shade at the well; all of that medieval life that wraps Mexico in the sunshine of the past. “And if he would—I could never be happy in the United States. I was brought up to this. I’m part of it, and it of me,” she concluded, with a firm little nod. “I shall carry on my father’s work.”
The Three looked at one another. Bull’s troubled look, Jake’s dubious brows, Sliver’s cough, all expressed their common doubt. “Can you do it, Miss, alone?”
“I sha’n’t be altogether alone. Mr. Lovell and Mr. Benson will be here to advise, and I shall hire an American foreman. If you—” she paused, looking them over with sudden interest, then shook her head. “Of course, that’s absurd! You have your own business. But perhaps you might know some one?”
The Three looked at one another again, the same thought in the mind of each. Well they knew how close they were to the end of their rope. As in a cinematograph they saw Don Manuel, insolent and threatening; the American border tightly closed; the fusilado against a ’dobe wall that would surely end their Mexican operations. Black as a thundercloud that dark prospect stood out against the sunlit peace of the past week. Yet, to do them justice, the girl’s helpless situation affected them most. If they paused, it was with the natural hesitation of men surveying a new path.
Jake spoke first. “To tell the truth, Miss, we ain’t exactly what you’d call rushed with business.”
“Like all of us—upset by the revolutions.” She jumped to the natural conclusion, “Were you—mining?”
A picture of the lair on the bench of the abandoned mine flashed before all Three. Not without truth was Bull’s statement, “We ain’t worked it much, of late.”
“Peones all gone to the wars, I suppose?”