“So anxious?” he laughed bitterly. “What is it to you?”
“Only that I would not have them murdered.”
“And would they be the first? Is there a foot of Mexican soil which has not been soaked with good Mexican blood that you should be so careful for a gringo?” Slanting through an opening in the trees overhead the sun shone on his face, transforming it into a red mask of hate. “As yet no one of them has secured himself in the Barranca de Guerrero! So long as a Rocha is left to do the duty that belongs to the Garcias no one of them ever will.”
But now he had touched another string, and, straightening in her saddle, she gave him look for look. “When the Garcias need the Rochas to settle their quarrels it will be time for you to interfere. I should not advise you to speak thus to my uncle.”
Nevertheless she flinched a little at his answer. “That is my intention—this very night.”
With that they rode on, in silence for a while, then speaking of other things. But when he left her in the upper courtyard an hour later she stood at her door, listening apprehensively to the jingle of his spurs along the gallery. When he took a chair beside Don Luis, who sat there smoking, she listened for a while. Then, flushing suddenly, she hastily went in.
If she had remained there was nothing to hear, for during many minutes the conversation ran altogether on the herds as they came winding in from distant pastures to the corrals in the square. Night had reduced everything to a dark blur before Sebastien commented on a yellow twinkle high up on the Barranca wall.
“That will be the gringos’ light at Santa Gertrudis.” After a long pause, “It is now a month past since they came, and—they are still here.”
Don Luis flicked the ash from his cigar. “What hurry?”
“But this new business? The smelter you spoke of the other day.”