She stared at them a moment strangely in a sudden mist of tears, as Clodomiro jumped down and arranged for her to alight. Cap Pike looking up, all but dropped the coffeepot.
“Some little collector––that boy!” he muttered, and then aloud, “You Kit!”
Kit turned and came forward leading Billie, who suddenly developed panic at vision of the most beautiful, tragic face she had ever seen.
“Some collector!” murmured Cap Pike forgetting culinary operations to stare. “Shades of Sheba’s queen!”
But Kit, whose days and nights of Mesa Blanca and Soledad had rather unfitted him for hasty adjustments to conventions, or standardized suspicion regarding the predatory male, held the little hand of Billie very tightly, and did not notice her gasp of amazement. He went forward to assist Doña Jocasta, whose hesitating half glance about her only enhanced the wonder of jewel-green eyes whose beauty had been theme of many a Mexic ballad.
For these were the first Americanos she had ever met, and it was said in the south that Americanos might be wild barbaros,––though the señor of the songs–––
The señor of the songs reached his hand and made his best bow as he noted her sudden shrinking.
“Here, Doña Jocasta, are friends of good heart. We are now on the edge of the lands of La Partida, and this little lady is its padrona waiting to give you welcome at the border. Folks, this is Señora Perez who has escaped from hell by help of the guns of El Gavilan.”
“Doña Jocasta!” repeated Cap Pike standing in amazed incredulity with the forgotten skillet at an awkward angle dripping grease into the camp fire, but his amazement regarding personality did not at all change his mental attitude as to the probable social situation. “Some collector, Brother, but hell in Sonora isn’t the only hell you can blaze the trail to with the wrong combination!”
Kit turned a silencing frown on the philosopher of the skillet, but Billie went toward the guest with outstretching hands.