"And she took me for you," Francis mused, glimpsing the situation. "I don't blame you for losing your temper, though you must admit it's a nasty one. Wanted to cut off my ears yesterday, didn't you?"
"Yours is just as nasty, Francis, my boy. The way you insisted that I cut them off when I had you down ha! ha!" Both young men laughed in hearty amity.
"It's the old Morgan temper," Henry said. "He was by all the accounts a peppery old cuss."
"No more peppery than those Solanos you're marrying into. Why, most of the family came down on the beach and peppered me with rifles on my departing way. And your Leoncia pulled her little popgun on a long-bearded old fellow who might have been her father and gave him to understand she'd shoot him full of holes if he didn't stop plugging away at me."
"It was her father, I'll wager, old Enrico himself," Henry exclaimed. "And the other chaps were her brothers."
"Lovely lizards!" ejaculated Francis. "Say, don't you think life is liable to become a trifle monotonous when you're married into such a peaceful, dove-like family as that!" He broke off, struck by a new idea. "By the way, Henry, since they all thought it was you, and not I, why in thunderation did they want to kill you? Some more of your crusty Morgan temper that peeved your prospective wife's relatives?"
Henry looked at him a moment, as if debating with himself, and then answered.
"I don't mind telling you. It is a nasty mess, and I suppose my temper was to blame. I quarreled with her uncle. He was her father's youngest brother."
"Was?" interrupted Francis with significant stress on the past tense.
"Was, I said," Henry nodded. "He isn't now. His name was Alfaro Solano, and he had some temper himself. They claim to be descended from the Spanish conquistadores, and they are prouder than hornets. He'd made money in logwood, and he had just got a big henequen plantation started farther down the coast. And then we quarreled. It was in the little town over there San Antonio. It may have been a misunderstanding, though I still maintain he was wrong. He always was looking for trouble with me didn't want me to marry Leoncia, you see.