"You bristle with eagerness, senor caballero of my soul!" remarked Pascual slyly.
Miguel Alvarado shrugged his shoulders, but did not answer. Suspicion growing in his glance, the apelike one continued to eye him. Then, as if he were accusing his camarada of something rather to be ashamed of, he said pointedly:
"It is because Gypsies are so near, that you burn and bristle—is it not? You are enamored of them; they captivate you with their uncouth glamors; towards them you are drawn, eh?
"Ah, I understand now, Miguel, that which heretofore has made you seem mysterious in my eyes—your trick of reading cabalistic signs written in chalk on the stonework of bridges and the adobe of posadas and providencias; your trick of reading hillocks of grass and crosses of sticks placed beside the road; and your trick, too, of ordering your pony about in the thieves' Latin of the Gitanos. You are like so many other Moors of Andalusia, Miguel Alvarado. You are one of Los del Aficion—Those of the Predilection! I have guessed rightly, have I not?"
Miguel Alvarado shrugged his shoulders once again, and smiled his superior smile. Lightly, he remarked, "The Gypsy wenches are like she-leopards, soft and caressing of movement, but free and bold of eye. I cannot resist the lure in their golden glances."
The other snorted and spat disgustedly down into the watercourse. He drew a little away from Miguel Alvarado. After that, he rode on, through the gathering dusk, very much in the manner of a man companioned by one possessed of a demon—full of a certain respect but also full of reserve and caution. Scarcely could you say he became more at his ease, more the boon compañero and dorado. Was not the man he rode with one of Those of the Predilection?
In Spain, especially in Andalusia, there has long existed a large class of men given over utterly to a zest for Gitanos, their ways of life, their dances and their songs. These admirers of the Gypsies cannot shake off the fascination; they follow after the wandering Roms like the slaves of an evil eye; they cultivate the Cales, the Black Men of Zend, wherever met; they delight to watch the strange obscene dances of the Gypsy maids that are like nothing so much as writhings of snakes in an ecstasy of desire. These men are Those of the Predilection.
In the hushed and golden gloaming, they came at last, those two of the Guardia Civil, to a turning of the narrow canyon and then, beyond, to a Gypsy camp set in an opening among the trees. The brown tents were patched with rags of a hundred hues, and strings of rags, slovenly washed and as variegated, hung drooping and gathering smoke between the ridgepoles and the trees.
There were seven dusty dun wagons in a wide circle, and great huddles of gaunt and hungry dogs lazying about, and horses, foals, and burros coming and going at will among the trees. From the limbs of the trees dangled all manner of saddles, traces, and other odds and ends of harness. There were three fires sending black smoke and dancing sparks up into the lines of washing and the overarching greenery; and there were a dozen men and women, and three times that many children, postured about the fires and beneath the wagons.
"Alto à la Guardia Civil!" bellowed thunderously Pascual Montara, thinking to give the Gypsies a start with this dread call of the police.