ten, maybe–and the oranges are falling. Send up that idler, Joe; and, by the way, how’s Pedro?”

It was the blue eyes now which turned keen and searching, and under their gaze Antonio’s were averted toward some distant point in the landscape, though the contemptuous smile remained upon his lips.

“That was a fool’s errand, too, Senor Bernal, and I did so want to be at home this morning. Pedro was never livelier. Whoever told you he was ill was quite mistaken.”

Antonio gave a short, derisive laugh, dug his spurs into Nero’s sides and loped away. A picturesque, noticeable figure in his quaint, half-Spanish dress and his silver-decorated sombrero, bestriding the heavy Mexican saddle upon his powerful horse.

29“Vain as a peacock,” was his fellow-ranchmen’s opinion of their “boss,” though had his affectations been all his shortcomings these had not lessened their liking for him.

29

Lady Jess looked after him for a moment, her face still sober and perplexed.

“I ought to be at home, helping mother, this minute; but I’m going first to the corral to speak a word of comfort to poor Beppo, and see how big a plucking there was. If it was a good yield that will be so much the better news to tell my dear, and this certainly is the finest plume we ever got. Good! There are some of the boys over there, too, and I’ll save time by getting one of them to go up the canyon to John. Hola!”

Her soliloquy ended in the gay little Spanish salute, and this was now instantly answered by a hearty shout of welcome from a group of rough-garbed men, taking a moment’s rest in the shade of the old adobe packinghouse.

As lightly as if she had not already walked a long distance, the girl ran to her friends, to be at once caught up by a pair of strong arms and gently placed upon a cushion in the box of an empty wagon.

“But this was your place, Joe Dean. I saw you get up from it.”

“It’s yours now, Lady Jess. You do me proud. What’s the good word? How’s old Pedro?”

“Well just plain, every day well. Never been sick a minute. Had all that climb for nothing; or, maybe, not quite for nothing, because I met a stranger up there and liked him; and saw John Benton as I came down, and–found this! Isn’t that a plume to be proud 

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