“Not to him,” replied the Comandante, “but to that vulgar fellow who seems his friend. The worst of it is, when one bets with these low people there is no chance of getting a revanche at some other time. One cannot meet them in the ordinary way.”
“But who is the fellow?” again inquired one.
“Who? Why, a cibolero—that’s all.”
“True, but is there nothing about his history? He’s a gilero, and that is odd for a native! Is he a Criollo? He might be a Biscayan.”
“Neither one nor the other. ’Tis said he’s an Americano.”
“Americano!”
“Not exactly that—his father was; but the padré here can tell all about him.”
The priest thus appealed to entertained the company with some facts in the history of the cibolero. His father had been an Americano, as it was supposed—some stray personage who had mysteriously found his way to the valley and settled in it long ago. Such instances were rare in the settlements of New Mexico; but what was rarer still, in this case the “Americano” was accompanied by an “Americana”—the mother of Carlos—and the same old woman who attracted so much attention on the day of San Juan. All the efforts of the padrés to christianise either one or the other had been in vain. The old trapper—for such he was—died as he had lived—a blaspheming “heretico;” and there was a general belief in the settlement that his widow held converse with the devil. All this was a scandal to the Church, and the padrés would long since have expelled the güero family, but that, for some reason or other, they were protected by the old Comandante—Vizcarra’s predecessor—who had restrained the zealous priests in their good intention.
“But, caballeros!” said the padré, glancing towards Vizcarra, “such heretics are dangerous citizens. In them lie the seeds of revolution and social disturbance; and when this güero is at home, he is seen only in the company of those we cannot watch too closely: he has been seen with some of the suspected Tagnos, several of whom are in his service.”
“Ha! with them, indeed!” exclaimed several. “A dangerous fellow!—he should be looked after.”