"If you go they'll kill you," she said in a voice as dry as a whisper.
"Sho! Nothing to that. I'm going down disguised. I'll be safe enough."
"I suppose ... nothing can keep you from going." A sob choked up in her throat as she spoke.
"No. I've got to go."
"You think you have a right to play at dice with your life! Don't your friends count with you at all?"
"It's because they do that I'm going," he answered gently.
Her troubled eyes rested on his. The protest in her heart was still urgent, but she dared go no further. Some instinct of maidenly reticence curbed the passionate rebellion against his decision. If she said more, she might say too much. With a swift, sinuous turn of the slender body she ran into the house and left him standing there.
Daisy sat at one end of the pergola mending a glove. It was in the pleasant cool of the evening just as dusk was beginning to fall. A light breeze rustled the rose-leaves and played with the tendrils of her soft, wavy hair. The coolness was grateful after the heat of an Arizona day.
The front gate creaked. A man was coming in, a Mexican of the peon class. He moved up the walk toward her with a slight limp. As he drew closer, she observed negligently that he was of early middle age, ragged, and of course dirty. Age and lack of soap had so dyed his serape that the original color was quite gone.