"'Are you looking for game?' I asked.
"'Por vida del demonio, that I am!' said he, with a savage grin, 'but it is neither the elk, the jaguar, or the vinado I seek.'
"'What then, amigo mio?'
"'You must know,' began the young rascal, 'that Pedro and I have spent all our money—every duro, yes, every quartil—he at the wineshop, and I on Katarina, the barmaid at the Pasada de Todos Santos, and that other jade with the wheel—what's her name?—Fortune has since been as unkind to me as Katarina, with whom I parted on bad terms.'
"'You quarrelled?' said I.
"Zuares looked keenly into the gully, listened a moment, and then resumed his bantering style.
"'When last I visited the posada, Katarina had on a very handsome crucifix and pair of silver bracelets, so I took them off, saying, "Senora, a beautiful bosom, and such pretty hands as yours, require no adornment. Permit me to relieve you of these baubles—they are absurd!" She was about to permit herself the luxury of screaming, but I touched my knife and quieted her. Since then I have been left to shift for myself, as my father and mother too have turned their venerable backs upon me.'
"'I have not a coin, Zuares,' said I, with growing alarm, lest the underwood of aloes might be full of such evil weeds as the younger Barradas. 'Surely you mean not to rob me?'
"'Of course not; you are a bueno camarada. But as Pedro and I came through the Barranca Secca we heard that an old woman of the Puebla de Perote, who sold some cattle at Orizaba, will pass this way about nightfall. She is veiled, and has the blessed duros concealed among her hair, for fear of thieves—ha! ha! for fear of thieves," he continued, pirouetting about, and slapping the butt of his musket. 'Pedro watches one part of the road and I the other, so the money we shall have—(what use has an old woman for it?)—even should we take her scalp with it.'
"'Perhaps her hair may be false,' said I.