"Thank you, Don Estevan, thank you," said the Mexican. "It is most interesting; but I wonder you can think of going back to such a compañero. It is a very perilous idea."
"Oh, well," answered Stephens carelessly, as he rose to take his departure, "meeting him isn't the same thing as going and doubling up with him again. I'll be apt to know more about that when I see him."
But Manuelita's heart gave a little painful throb at the discovery that this man, in whom she was fast learning to take an interest too great for her own peace of mind, could return so lightly to a life that had already brought him into such dangers, and could depart apparently without thinking of her, or of what his loss might mean to her. He did indeed belong to another world.
His mule was brought out and saddled, and his belt once more buckled on, with the revolver hanging low on his right hip. He warmly grasped Don Nepomuceno's hand at parting, and with a smile and a bow and his hat doffed to the ladies, he swung himself into the saddle and rode away.
Don Nepomuceno and his sister stood in the great doorway at the entrance to the courtyard, looking after his retreating form. He rode with the long stirrup and erect military seat of one who had seen service in a United States cavalry regiment, no bad school for horsemanship; his fine figure and his athletic frame showed off to great advantage. A hundred yards away, at the bend of the road, he turned in his saddle to wave his hat once more in a final adieu, and the warm sunlight kissed his profusion of golden curls. Manuelita ran back into the house that her aunt might not detect the emotion betrayed by her quivering lip. But the elder lady had her gaze steadily directed towards the parting guest. "Ah, que hombres tan aventureros, si, son estos!" she said—"What bold adventurers they are, those men!"
"True indeed," answered her brother, "'tis most true. For myself, I hate the Americans, most of them, but admire this one, and I like him too. But he is set on this life of adventure. I sounded him on the matter; I even hinted to him that it was full time for him to marry and settle down. But he would none of it."
"Es hombre muy frio"—"He is a very cold man"—said the Mexican woman, and there was a spice of scorn as well as regret in her tone. She despised a man who was a laggard in love, and her spoken judgment had coincided with Manuelita's thought.
"It is true, it is most true," assented her brother. "He is cold. These Americans are not impassioned in the love of women as we are. The chill of their frozen North is in the very marrow of their bones. They are not like unto us of Mexico and the South."
Those who know them best will bear witness that, whether they are descended from Spanish conquistadores, from the devoted warriors of Montezuma, the passionate hearts of the sons and daughters of Mexico prove them in very truth to be Children of the Sun.