Bull broke a second frowning pause. “You’ve knowed her almost all her life. Kedn’t you put in a word?”
The Englishman made a wry face. “I did, about six months ago, when I first noticed this thing starting. But never again!” He laughed, a little self-consciously. “I never had any one sauce me so in all my life. Told me that it was none of my damn business; to go home and boss my poor wife. Said that she preferred Mexicans to English, anyway. Phe-e-ew! I never think of it, even now, without aching to spank her. No, counsel wouldn’t help her.”
“But she simply kain’t be allowed to go ahead an’ marry him.” Bull’s coal eyes flashed with the old wicked gleam. “Before that I’d—lay for him an’ shoot him.”
Benson regarded him dryly. “Your plan has the advantage of finality, but—it would lead to reprisals. Old Icarza stands well with Valles. If anything happened to his beloved son we’d be wiped out so completely there’d be no one left to mourn us. But why worry? We don’t know for sure whether she even loves him. Give me two cards. I raise you three blues.”
For two hours thereafter the two played and talked, arranging a code of smoke signals by day, beacons by night, to warn the haciendas. But under it Bull’s thought still revolved around Lee and her problem. The party had returned from the walk, and Lee was shooing all her guests off to bed before his brow cleared and he uttered a low chuckle.
“What’s the matter?” Benson looked up in surprise.
“Oh, jest something I was thinking of. I raise you two reds.”
Not until Jake woke up when Bull entered the bunkhouse did his secret thought find expression. “Sure I noticed it,” he answered Jake’s remark concerning Lee’s “likin’ for that Mexican.” “But leave it to me.”
“What d’you allow to do?”
This time Bull laughed outright. “Mrs. Mills was saying, t’other day, that we’d have to import a rival. ’Tain’t sech a bad idea.”