"Do not listen to these selfish stingy Moors, maestro! Come with me—I will kill a pullet for you, the last of my lot! Come with me, I beg you, caballerete! To ask you to be my guest, I have the supreme right. My husband was the last man of the village to be murdered by the Guardia Civil!"
Carlos Machado and certain others turned wrathful faces toward Juan Quesada's widow. But she had, indeed, the supreme right, and they dared make no objection when the corduroy-clad cabalgador said most heartily:
"Well spoken, woman! I will go with you. Your husband shall not have been murdered in vain and your pullet lived to no good purpose!"
Then he laughed in the faces of the others and said with sudden imperiousness:
"Bring your lentils and your puchero to the widow's casa, mis paisanos! My appetite is the most gorgeous appetite in Spain, and all you have will not be too much for me. Besides you will do well to fat me up, you Spaniards!"
He dismounted and followed Jacinto Quesada's mother, giving instructions to certain of the villagers as to how they should water and fodder his horse.
CHAPTER III
When his mother went out on the mountainside to catch and to kill the last surviving chicken, Jacinto Quesada went with her both to lend her a hand and to ask her a question. She held the pullet to the block and Jacinto raised the axe. Then, the axe poised aloft, Jacinto asked:
"Who is this rough burly man to whom the people do such honor?"