PRIOR to leaving New Orleans, Webster had cabled Billy Geary that he was taking passage on La Estrellita and stating the approximate date of his arrival at San Buenaventura—which information descended upon that young man with something of the charm of a gentle rainfall over a hitherto arid district. He had been seeing Dolores Ruey at least once a day ever since her return to Sobrante; indeed, only the fear that he might wear out his welcome prevented him from seeing her twice a day. He was quick, therefore, to seize upon Webster's cablegram as an excuse to call upon Dolores and explain the mystery surrounding his friend's nonappearance.
“Well, Dolores,” he began, in his excitement calling her by her first name for the first time, “they say it's a long lane that hasn't got a saloon at the end of it. I've heard from Jack Webster.”
“What's the news, Bill?” Dolores inquired. From the first day of their acquaintance she had been growing increasingly fond of Geary; for nearly a week she had been desirous of calling him Bill, which is a comfortable name and, to Dolores's way of thinking, a peculiarly appropriate cognomen for such a distinctly American young man. At mention of the beloved word he glanced down at her pleasurably.
“Thank you,” he said. “I'm glad you got around to it finally. Those that love me always call me Bill.”
“You called me Dolores.”
“I move we make it unanimous. I'm a foe to formality.”
“Second the motion, Bill. So am I—when I care to be—and in our case your formality is spoiling our comradeship. And now, with reference to the extraordinary Senor Webster——”
“Why, the poor old horse has been down with ptomaine poisoning. They carried him off the train at St. Louis and stood him on his head and pumped him out and just did manage to cancel his order for a new tombstone. He says he's feeding regularly again and has booked passage on La Estrellita, so we can look for him on the next steamer arriving.”
“Oh, the poor fellow!” Dolores murmured—so fervently that Billy was on the point of hurling his heart at her feet on the instant.
The thousand dollars Webster had cabled Billy “for a road-stake” had been dwindling rapidly under the stimulus of one continous opportunity to spend the same in a quarter where it was calculated to bring the most joy. The pleasures of the Sobrantean capital were not such that the average Yankee citizen might be inspired to prefer them with any degree of enthusiasm, but such as they were, Dolores Ruey had them all. In a country where the line between pure blood and mixed is drawn so strictly as it is in Sobrante, Billy Geary was, of course, a social impossibility. He was a Caucasian who would shake hands and have a drink with a gentleman whose nails showed blue at the bases, for all his white skin—and in the limited upper-class circles of Buenaventura, where none but pure-bred descendants of purebred Castilians intermingled, the man or woman who failed, however slightly, to remember at all times that he was white, was distinctly persona non grata.