"Take this letter, Onate, to Mr. Chalkeye Davies in Lordsburgh. Then you'll follow me home."
Onate uncovered, took the letter, and bowed his thanks. "Gracias señor, adios!" and curved off swift for Lordsburgh.
Then Jim saw the preacher's eyes boring him through.
"You will shake hands?" he asked.
"With a glad hand," said Captain McCalmont. "Put her thar, boy! I hope when we meet up again you'll remember me as a friend."
So the great robber swung his horse, and spurred up back to his hilltop, while Jim and the vaqueros burned the trail for home.
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE
It used to be a great sight down at Holy Cross when the vaqueros came back from the round-up, serapes flapping in the wind, hats waving, guns popping, ponies tearing around, and eating up the ground. And then the house folk came swarming out to meet them, the little boys and dogs in a shouting heap, the girls bunched together and squealing, the young wives laughing, the old mothers, the tottering granddads, all plumb joyful to welcome the riders home. So they would mix up, crowd through the gates, and on the stable court to see a beef shot for the feast. Presently the little boys would come out in the dusk of the evening, bareback to herd the ponies through the pasture gate, and scamper back barefoot to the house in time for supper. All night long the lamps were alight in the great hall, the guitars a-strumming, and young feet dancing, and last, at the break of dawn, the chapel bell would call for early mass.