“And now the gods have called your bluff.”
“Bluff?” She laughed again at the meaning of that rank Americanism. “It was no bluff, as you will presently see.”
And see he did—during the long hour they spent splashing along in black darkness, up hill, down dale, fording swollen arroyos, through chaparral which tore at them with myriad claws and wet woods whose boughs lashed their faces. Up to the moment that the roof of a hut suddenly loomed out against the dim, dark sky she uttered no doubt or complaint. When, having tied his horse under the wide eaves, he lit a match inside, its flare revealed her face, quiet and serene.
Also it showed that which, while not nearly so interesting, had its immediate uses—a candle stuck in a tequila bottle; and its steadier flare presently helped them to another find—a chemisette and other garments of feminine wear, spotlessly clean and smoothly ironed, arranged on a string that ran over a bunk in one corner.
“The fiesta wear of our hostess,” Francesca remarked. “How lucky! for I am drenched.”
“And look at that pile of dry wood!” he exclaimed. “The gods are with us. I’ll build a fire, then while I rub down the horse you can change. What’s this?”
It was a rough sketch done with charcoal on the table. Two parallelograms with sticks for legs were in furious pursuit of certain horned squares which, in their turn, were in full flight toward a doll’s house in the far corner.
“Oh, I know!” the girl cried, after a moment of study. “Here, in the wild country where they never see man, are raised the fighting bulls for the rings of Mexico. This hut belongs to a vaquero of San Angel, and this is an order, left in his absence, to drive the bulls into the hacienda.” Laying her finger on a triangle which had evidently been added later, she continued, laughing: “This shows that his woman has gone with him. They were evidently called away unexpectedly, for she had already set the corn to soak in this olla for the supper tortillas. And the saints be praised! Here are dried beef, salt, and chilis. Now hurry the fire, and you shall see what a cook I am.”
While he was building it in the center of the mud floor she made other finds—a cube of brown sugar, coffee, a cake of goat’s cheese; and her little delighted exclamations over each discovery both amused him and proved how sincere was her acceptance of the situation. “She’s a brick!” he told the horse, rubbing him down, outside, with wisps pulled out from the under side of the thatch. “Thoroughbred in blood and bone.” As the animal had already experimented with the thatch and found it quite to its liking, the question of provender was settled. But in order that Francesca might have ample time to change, Seyd rubbed and rubbed and rubbed till a rattle of clay pots inside gave him leave to come in.