“I no hurt-y you, Señorita,” he said.
“You bet you won’t,” answered the Queen, shaking back one finished, massive plait. “But don’t you think you’d better move on?”
“Not hurt-y you—no. But maybeso take one beso—one li’l kees, you call him.”
The man smiled again, and set his foot to ascend the slope. Alvarita leaned swiftly and picked up a stone the size of a cocoanut.
“Vamoose, quick,” she ordered peremptorily, “you coon!”
The red of insult burned through the Mexican’s dark skin.
“Hidalgo, Yo!” he shot between his fangs. “I am not neg-r-ro! Diabla bonita, for that you shall pay me.”
He made two quick upward steps this time, but the stone, hurled by no weak arm, struck him square in the chest. He staggered back to the footway, swerved half around, and met another sight that drove all thoughts of the girl from his head. She turned her eyes to see what had diverted his interest. A man with red-brown, curling hair and a melancholy, sunburned, smooth-shaven face was coming up the path, twenty yards away. Around the Mexican’s waist was buckled a pistol belt with two empty holsters. He had laid aside his sixes—possibly in the jacal of the fair Pancha—and had forgotten them when the passing of the fairer Alvarita had enticed him to her trail. His hands now flew instinctively to the holsters, but finding the weapons gone, he spread his fingers outward with the eloquent, abjuring, deprecating Latin gesture, and stood like a rock. Seeing his plight, the newcomer unbuckled his own belt containing two revolvers, threw it upon the ground, and continued to advance.
“Splendid!” murmured Alvarita, with flashing eyes.
As Bob Buckley, according to the mad code of bravery that his sensitive conscience imposed upon his cowardly nerves, abandoned his guns and closed in upon his enemy, the old, inevitable nausea of abject fear wrung him. His breath whistled through his constricted air passages. His feet seemed like lumps of lead. His mouth was dry as dust. His heart, congested with blood, hurt his ribs as it thumped against them. The hot June day turned to moist November. And still he advanced, spurred by a mandatory pride that strained its uttermost against his weakling flesh.