"More or less. It's the Stars and Stripes for me too, every time!"
"You are a likely-looking man. Since you have left Farquharson I'll offer you place with me. You will find it active, full of excitement, and with pay not small."
"Thank you, Mr. Irishman, but I don't intend to work any more for strangers. It's like buying a pig in a sack. 'Seenyore' Mendoza offered me two things this afternoon, one was his house and farm, t'other was a job. I'll think I'll take the job. Otherwise, it's me for old Missouri."
O'Donnell again laughed. "Very well, then, take service with Señor Mendoza. I'll ride to Mission San José later in the evening, and I intend to call on Mendoza myself. Would be glad of your company, if you'll come along with me."
The wounded began to come in on improvised litters. O'Donnell and Brown gave their assistance toward bringing them into comfortable quarters. Many of the men did not return from the field of La Cuesta de los Gatos. There was lamentation in hacienda house and in peon cot that night in the valley of Santa Clara.
"There's nothing more for us to do here, Brown. Are you ready to start for Mendoza's?" It was midnight and the wounded had been cared for.
"All right. I'll go with you."
They set out, the fighting peons following, their ranks sadly decimated by the afternoon fight.
"Blamed sorry to leave the Cap'n," Brown volunteered. "He's a decent chap, and smart—well, about the best educated man I ever saw—and spunky—I'll never forget how he half raised up from that stair-landing in Monterey, like a shot weasel standing off a pack of dogs. Fire was just spitting from his eyes—just spitting!"
"But his politics," O'Donnell interpolated.