es and revolvers, with gaudy handkerchiefs knotted at their
throats.

The firelight showed the flash of their cruel eyes and teeth at some
stroke of fortune in the play, and Jim, who was not unaccustomed to see
and deal with dubious citizens, felt that right below him was the
hardest bunch that ill fortune had ever brought across his path. He was
not forgetting either the Apaches with whom he and his brothers had
enjoyed more than one fracas in the great Southwest.

But what the observer regarded with greatest interest was a group of
three well back in the shadow, and he needed none to tell him who that
short, squat figure was. He held a guitar, and was accompanying his own
songs while the other two joined in the refrain. It was his _bete noir_,
the Mexican dwarf who had recently robbed him, and out-maneuvered him on
two occasions at least.

Strange to say that if you did not see him, and only heard his voice you
would be certain that he was a lithe, Spanish cavalier, of the "oh
Juanita" type of lover, for his tone was neither guttural nor harsh but
smooth and melodious, and to-night for some reason he was inclined to
sentimental songs of the serenade kind, but this reason was soon to
appear.

"Who gets the Senorita Manuel, the one who came in the carriage this
evening, as though to a ball?" queried one of the players at the card
table. The words were spoken at an interval between games.

Jim almost stood up in his sudden enlightenment and wrath but he
bethought himself in time and with whitened knuckles he drove the
poniard held in his hand deep into the wood of the floor. This, in a
mild way served to express his feelings. At the question the dwarf
swaggered into the full light of the fire.

"I, Manuel de Gorzaga, will have the senorita, my voice will charm her,
and my money please her."

Jim could hardly restrain a scornful laugh at the audacity of the dwarf,
but he noticed that though the others regarded him askance they did not
ridicule him, but seemed to have a certain fear of his malignity, and
his cunning craft. Jim saw that he was clean shaven now and that he
moved his head back and forth in front of his hump, like an ugly hooded
bird, and his shadow was distorted on the high vaulted ceiling into
something horrible and of ill omen. To complete the picture, it is
necessary to say that he was dressed in gorgeous fashion in a suit of
slashed velvet, and a resplendent sash around his waist.

There was a m