Among his guests for this particular monteria were many Spanish notables, high and mighty ones of Letters, the State, and the Church, as well as several foreign ambassadors and their attachés. The Duke of Fernan Nuñez, the Duke of Medinaceli, the Marquis of Viana, the Conde de Agrela, the Marquesa de Manzanedo, Colonel Barrera and Senor D. I. L. de Ybarra were among the crack guns invited.
Lario de Quinones had his own pack of podencos, or hunting dogs—a recoba of about forty dogs. But, as is the custom of the sporting gentry of Spain, certain of his guests—the Duke of Fernan Nuñez, the Conde de Agrela, and Colonel Barrera—had brought with them their own packs of podencos and their own huntsmen, to reinforce De Quinones' pack and make the drive a more stupendous affair.
Now, Pepe Flammenca and his Gypsy lads were arrant trespassers on the hunting grounds of the grandees. Should the mountaineers who served as beaters and extra huntsmen come upon them in the brushwood, they would thrash them unmercifully and drive them out of the mountains at the points of their guns. But Pepe Flammenca and his bucks were hardened and desperate poachers. It was their plan to skulk along the line of the drive and to hide themselves in thickets near the armada or firing line of gentlemen sportsmen; and should a wounded stag come bounding toward their places of concealment, it would be most swiftly killed and most swiftly borne away to their camp.
A head or two of game would not be missed, nor a rifle report away to one side cause much sensation in all that great to-do of the monteria. To drown the sound of the poachers' guns, there would be the baying and tinkling of bell-carrying dogs, the trumpeting of huntsmen upon their caracolas, the shooting of blank cartridges to announce that some game-beast had been jumped, the crashing of beaters through the thorny cistus, and the running reports of magazine rifles along the rayas or open rides.
After the poaching Gypsies had gone on their quest, Quesada sauntered down to the brook. Here, where an arcade of oleanders shaded a tiny white beach, he seated himself upon a huge stone above a pool. He busied with watching the trout in the riffles and with spying upon two water shrews that swam beneath the surface of the slack water, and dipped and dived, seeking everywhere for food. For something like half an hour, these velvety-black little creatures engrossed Quesada's attention. Then, as pebbles tinkled down near at hand, he looked up to see the girl Paquita coming down the bank.
She seated herself beside him on one end of the stone, swinging her bare brown feet above the pool.
"You have not said that I look very pretty in this green Spanish dress," she said at length. "But that is your thought, is it not? It would not be difficult for me to be the proud and aristocratic lady, eh, man? But I would rebel if I must wear shoes! I think my sun-burnt little feet are prettier naked as they are!"
Quesada smiled and continued to smoke his cigarette.
She leaned her body against the bole of the tree behind, and clasped her hands behind her head, and thoughtfully regarded him. After a time, she said:
"Tell me, caballero of my soul—tell me, have you ever loved a Gypsy girl, a brown, soft-cooing maiden of the Zincali who was sugar and wine to kiss, and velvet and Filipino silk to caress?"