“Do you mean that you wouldn't have done so if your mother hadn't wished it?”
“No sir, not that. I think I would, for I felt great sympathy with the Don for the contemptible manner in which the squatters received the propositions he made them. I was convinced then that the land belonged to him, and nobody had a right to take it without paying for it.”
“Aha! I knew we would come to that,” said Darrell, sternly, glaring at his son. “I was a thieving squatter, of course, and that is what you said to your greaser father-in-law, who to reward your high sense of honor, took you to the bosom of his family. The cowardly dog, who will take insults and not resent them, but has puppies at his heels to throw lasooing at people.”
“Pshaw! I never thought you capable of—”
“Of what? Insulting those greasers?”
“They are gentlemen, no matter how much you may wish to besmear them with low epithets.”
“Gentlemen that won't fight.”
“They told you they would fight like gentlemen.”
“Who told you that?”
“I did, father. I heard Don Mariano and Don Gabriel both tell you that,” Everett said.