Agueda turned to see Don Beltran standing in the doorway of the comidor. He was smiling. His face looked brown and healthful against the worn blue of the old painted door. His white trousers were tucked within the tops of his high boots, and he wore a belt of tanned leather, with the usual accompaniment of a pistol-holder, which was empty, the belt forming a strap for a machete, and holding safely that useful weapon of domesticity or menace. His fine striped shirt hung in loose folds partly over the belt; the collar, broad, and turned down from the brown throat, being held carelessly in place by a flowing coloured tie. He had an old Panama hat in his brown hand. His wavy hair swept back from his forehead, crisp and changeable in its dark gold lights. His brown eyes looked kindly at the girl, but more particularly at the basket which she filled.
"Have you some glasses?" he asked, "and some—"
"Water, Señor? Yes, I have not forgotten that."
Don Beltran laughed merrily.
"I fancy that we shall have water enough, 'Gueda, child. Get my flask and fill it with rum. The pink rum of the vega. Here, let me get the demijohn. Run for the flask, child. Perhaps I should have listened to the warning of old Emperatriz."
There were other warnings which Beltran had not taken into account. The sultry day that had passed, the total absence of breeze, the low-flying birds, the stridulous cry of the early home-flying parrots, the dun-colored sky to the south and east, the whinneying and neighing of the horses. The old grey, who knew the signs of the times, had torn his bridle loose and raced across the pasture-land to the hill where stood the rancho. He was the pioneer; the others had followed him, and the little roan had galloped away last of all, with Adan to guide and reassure him. The bulls, leaping and plunging with heads to earth and hind hoofs raised in air, with shaking fringe of tail and bellowed pleading, had asked, as plainly as could creatures to whom God gave a soul, to be allowed to flee to the mountain. Adan, in passing, had unclasped and thrown wide the gate, and they had raced with him for certain life from the death which might be imminent. Emperatriz had whined and had pounded her tail restlessly against the planks of the floor. Then she had arisen, and stood with her great forepaws resting upon Beltran's shoulder, gazing with anxiety that was almost human into his face.
"Caramba Hombre!" Beltran had said, as he threw the great beast away from him. Then he had laughed. "I am like the peons, who address even the women so. It does mean a storm, Emperatriz, old girl, but I do not care to go."
He had opened the outer door. The great hound had darted through, leaped from the veranda to the ground, and fled toward the south, barking as she ran at the encroaching enemy. She had circled round the casa, nose in air, her whimpering cries ascending to the sky, which shone, as yet, blue overhead. Then back she had torn to the steps, and bounding up and in at the door, had crouched at her master's feet, her nose upon the leather of his shoe, her flanks curved high. Then she had leaped upon him again. She had taken his sleeve gently between her teeth as if to compel him to safety, then crouched again, flapping her great tail upon the floor, her eyes raised to his, her whine pleading like the tones of a human voice. Beltran had shaken the dog away.
"I am not going, Emperatriz," he had said, impatiently. "Be off with you!"
A few more circlings round the casa, a few more appealing cries, a backward glance and a backward bark, and Emperatriz had started for the rancho, and none too soon. The potrero had become a shallow lake, through which she splashed before she had placed her forefeet upon the rise.