ow the tricks of a certain girl who, with her foot on
my neck, stretched forth a welcoming hand to a rival. Tom, I have lived
to pay her my last obligation in a revenge so sweet that if I die an
outcast on the roadside, all accounts are square."

CHAPTER XXI

INTERLOCUTORY PROCEEDINGS

A big summer's work lay before us. When Uncle Lance realized the
permanent loss of three men from the working force of Las Palomas, he
rallied to the situation. The ranch would have to run a double outfit
the greater portion of the summer, and men would have to be secured to
fill our ranks. White men who were willing to isolate themselves on a
frontier ranch were scarce; but the natives, when properly treated,
were serviceable and, where bred to the occupation and inclined to
domesticity, made ideal vaqueros. My injured foot improved slowly, and
as soon as I was able to ride, it fell to me to secure the extra help
needed. The desertion of Quayle and Cotton had shaken my employer's
confidence to a noticeable degree, and in giving me my orders to secure
vaqueros, he said:--

"Tom, you take a good horse and go down the Tarancalous and engage five
vaqueros. Satisfy yourself that the men are fit for the work, and hire
every one by the year. If any of them are in debt, a hundred dollars is
my limit of advance money to free them. And hire no man who has not
a family, for I'm losing confidence every minute in single ones,
especially if they are white. We have a few empty _jacals_, and the more
children that I see running naked about the ranch, the better it suits
me. I'll never get my money back in building that Cotton cottage until I
see a mother, even though she is a Mexican, standing in the door with
a baby in her arms. The older I get, the more I see my mistake in
depending on the white element."

I was gone some three days in securing the needed help. It was a
delicate errand, for no ranchero liked to see people leave his lands,
and it was only where I found men unemployed that I applied for and
secured them. We sent wagons from Las Palomas after their few effects,
and had all the families contentedly housed, either about headquarters
or at the outlying ranchitas, before the first contingent of beeves was
gathered. But the attempt to induce any of the new families to occupy
the stone cottage proved futile, as they were superstitious. There was
a belief among the natives, which no persuasion could remove, regarding
houses that w