The day after the sand storm Urgo and his rurales set out from the railroad for the west and the Garden of Solitude at the end of a long road. They were superbly mounted; two pack animals trotted behind the file of horsemen. Revolutions had been squelched by a less imposing force.
After the cleansing storm the desert was bland and tolerant. Air clear as quartz, sun tempered by fresh winds from the west, on every club and spike of cactus fresh flowers born overnight to replace those destroyed by the driving sands. One of the rurales unslung a guitar from a mule’s pack and strummed minor chords to the accompaniment of a song in which the rest joined. The ballad was gentle as a butterfly’s wing, telling of roses over a lady-love’s window.
Urgo, lulled by the immensity of the desert peace, perhaps even by the tenderness of the song his murderers sang, pleasured himself by building pictures in prospect. He saw himself riding alone up to the door of the Casa O’Donoju—the rurales would be disposed beyond sight of the door but within call; saw the courteous bow he would make to Señorita Benicia; heard himself inquiring in polite phrase concerning her health and that of her respected father. Ah, Don Padraic dead—murdered! Grace of God, but that was sad news. But the American gentleman who was a guest at the Casa O’Donoju; did his unfortunate wound still keep him under the beneficence of the casa’s hospitality—?
Five hours of the second day out on the Road of the Dead Men the rurale who was riding at the head of the file reined in with a shout. His arm stretched to point a tiny black beetle away off to the westward: a beetle skittering down the long slope of a divide and in their direction. In ten minutes the beetle showed again, but it had grown to the dimensions of an auto. It was upon them almost before the horsemen had spread themselves in a fan across the road. Quelele, whom Urgo instantly recognized, accepted the implied hint to halt; in the seat beside him was a strange white man—a gringo by his looks. This man let a bland, incurious eye range over the band of horsemen until it settled upon Urgo; there it rested with a dispassionate stare somehow affronting to the Spaniard’s dignity.
Urgo stiffly bowed and waited for the gringo to speak. Instead of returning his salutation the white man searched the pockets of his vest for tobacco bag and papers and bent all his attention upon rolling a cigarette.
“You have come from the Casa O’Donoju, señor?” Urgo asked in English. Bim Bagley gave the clipped Spanish “Si” of assent and drew his rolled cigarette across his lips with a languid air. Urgo in a growing rage wondered if this boorishness were the stranger’s typically American manner or assumed to provoke hostility. His voice was silken as he put his next question in Spanish:
“The Señorita O’Donoju and Don Padraic, her father, they enjoy the best health, I hope.”
“I hope so, too,” was Bim’s short reply as he put a match to his smoke. Urgo’s brows knitted. Here was no boor but a wise gringo with a chuckle behind every word.
“I am doing myself the honour to call upon Don Padraic and his charming daughter,” his temper pushed him to volunteer. Bim swept the company of horsemen with a lack-lustre eye and then let his glance return to the dapper figure of the Colonel.
“Do tell,” he drawled in broadest Border dialect. “See you brought all the boys with you. Well, so long!” He nudged the Indian a signal to go ahead. Urgo would have liked to detain this impudent gringo for a lesson in manners did not more pressing pleasure lie ahead. He gave an imperceptible nod and the horsemen who blocked the road moved aside. The little car shot back a pungent cloud of smoke for a parting insult as it took the road in high. Urgo watched it rise to the low crest of a divide and disappear. Insufferable gringo! What had he been doing at Casa O’Donoju? What did he know of recent events there?