“It will pay you, señor, to watch more carefully. One could shoot the eyes out of you with perfect ease.”
As Bull turned quickly, a dark face rose above the old wall. Oval in outline, the features, nose, brows, mouth, were all straight, emphasizing its naturally cold expression. Strangest of all, investing it with a weird, uncanny look, the eyes were blue. No hint of a smile warmed its ruling bleakness when he answered Bull’s question.
“Si, the señora is there. Ride on, señor. I shall watch here for a little while.”
Five minutes later, while Betty sat on Bull’s knee, the widow explained the apparition. “That was Terrubio, my Mexican foreman. He’s very faithful. Always he gets up and takes a look around two or three times in the night, and he does as much work as two ordinary Mexicans. He used to be a bandit in the old days; and once, when the rurales were hot on his trail, he hid in an old stable of ours. We found him next morning, almost shot to pieces. After I’d nursed him back to health Mr. Mills got his pardon from Diaz on condition that he’d stay with us and behave. That’s over ten years ago. He’s been with us ever since, and that old bandit reputation of his has been our best protection.”
“That’s fine, ma’am,” Bull made hearty comment. “It takes a bad man to scare a bad man. I’ll feel easier for knowing this.”
The widow had already dismissed Terrubio’s woman, who served as her criada, for the night. Now while she bustled around preparing Bull’s supper he looked on with huge content, his glance, in its respect and constancy, very like that of a mastiff. Several times, in passing, her skirts brushed him, and at each slight contact he blushed and trembled. Perhaps they were not quite accidental. At least she was fully aware of the effect, for each time she turned quickly to hide a smile. When, at last, she sat down with plump white arms folded on the table to watch him eat, the glow on his face was certainly not due to his business, though he introduced it then.
“Two months he’s been here, ma’am,” he concluded his tale of woe, “an’ nary a thing doing.”
“Why, what did you expect?” Her pretty, plump figure shook with laughter and Betty joined her childish merriment. “Did you think it would happen in the first five minutes? Now just consider—what good would she ever have of a man that would fall as easily as that? They talk of love at first sight, but let me tell you that those are the kind that fall out at second. It takes a slow horse for a steady pull and a slow man for a lasting love. It’s good that he isn’t impressionable, for he’ll go down all the harder for it. And you yourself wouldn’t have liked Lee to fall in love with him at once. But she isn’t that easy kind. The man that gets her will have to win her. But tell me the symptoms. How do they act?”
Bull gave the diagnosis—they appeared to like each other! Were very friendly! She liked to hear him talk! He couldn’t think of anything else!
The widow had checked off each count with a little nod. Now she burst out laughing. “Is that all? My goodness! Mr. Perrin, how blind you men are! That isn’t much to go on. Did you ever see him touch her, or she him, accidental, as it were?”