In the morning it comes off soon as breakfast is eaten. All known to be eligible are summoned together on a spot of ground apart, and told the purport of their being so assembled. No one objects, or tries to evade the dangerous conscription; instead, there are even some who, like Vicente, would volunteer for the duty.
For is not one of the dueños—the brave Englishman and his son, there present—both offering themselves as candidates like any of the common men?
No volunteering, then, is allowed; fortune alone permitted to decide on whom shall be the forlorn hope.
The quaint lottery, though awe-inspiring, occupies but a brief space of time. Against the number of men who are to take part in it, a like number of piñon-nuts have been counted out, and dropped into a deep-crowned sombrero. Two of the nuts have been already stained with gunpowder, the others left in their natural colour; but no one by the feel could tell which was which. The black ones are to be the prizes.
The men stand in a ring round Don Estevan, with another who is among the exempt in the centre. These hold the hat, into which one after another, stepping from the circle, led forward blindfolded, inserts his hand, and draws out a nut. If white, he goes clear; but long before the white ones are exhausted the two blacks are taken up, which brings the ceremony to an abrupt end, that deciding all.
They who have drawn the prizes are a muleteer and a cattle drover, both brave fellows. They had need be, for this very night they will have to run the gauntlet of life and death, perhaps ere the morrow’s sun to be no more.