To this he merely shrugged his shoulders.
"Won't you take it? I have no money."
"No, señor," said he, at length, with a somewhat haughty air, "I am a Spanish gentleman."
"Oh, I beg your pardon. Will you do me the favor, then, to accept a plug of tobacco?"
I opened my pack and handed him a large plug of the finest pressed Cavendish.
"Mil gracias!" said the Spanish gentleman, smiling affably, and making a condescending inclination of the head. "That suits me better. A watch is bad property here. I don't want to be killed yet a while."
Here was a hint of his reason for declining the proffered reward. But he did it very grandly; and I was quite willing to accord to him the title of Señor Caballero to which he aspired, though he certainly looked as unlike the Caballeros described by the learned Fray Antonio Agapida, who went out to make war upon the Moors of Granada, as one distinguished individual can look unlike another.
There was ample reason why I should regard my mule with dissatisfaction. All my misfortunes, so far, had arisen from his defective physical and mental organization (if I may use the term in reference to such an animal); but the fact is, it has been my fate, as far back as I can recollect, to have the worst stock in the country foisted upon me. Never yet, up to this hour, have I succeeded in purchasing a sound, safe, and reliable animal—except, indeed, an old horse that I once owned in Oakland, generally known in the neighborhood as Selim the Steady—a name derived from his unconquerable propensity for remaining in the stable, or getting back to it as soon as ever he left the premises.
The vaquero, or, as he aspired to be called, the Caballero, offered to barter his broncho for my mule, and, as an inducement, set him to bucking all over the ground within a circle of fifty yards, merely to show the spirit of the animal, of which I was so well satisfied that I declined the barter.