was laughing
at me.

"You big brown bob-cat! You look like you had slept in the Hondo 'royo
all your life," she cried, and turned to run away again.

As she did so a dark face peered round the corner of the church from the
crooked street beside it. A sudden gleam of white teeth and glistening
eyes, a sudden leap and grip, and a boy, larger than Beverly, caught the
little girl by the shoulders and shook her viciously.

She screamed and struggled. Then, with a wild shriek as he clutched at
her curls, she wrenched herself away and plunged inside the church. The
boy dived in after her. Another scream, and I had dropped from my pony
and leaped across the road. I pushed open the door against the two
struggling together. With one grip at his coat-collar I broke his hold
on the little girl and flung him outside.

I have a faint recollection of a priest hurrying down the aisle toward
the fighting children, as the little girl, freed from her assailant,
dashed out of the door.

"He jumped at her first, and shook her and pulled her hair," I cried, as
the priest caught me by the shoulder. "I'm not going to see anybody
pitched into, not a little girl, anyhow."

I jerked myself free from his grasp and ran out to my pony. At the
corner of the church stood the girl, her cheeks flushed, her eyes
blazing defiance, her rumpled curls in a tangle about her face.

"I hate Marcos, he's so cruel, and"--her voice softened and the defiant
eyes grew mischievous--"you aren't a bob-cat. You're a--Look out!"

She shouted the last words and disappeared up the narrow, crooked
street, just as a fragment of rock whizzed over my shoulder. I jumped on
my pony to dash away, when another rock just missed my head, and I saw
the boy, Marcos, beside the church, ready for a third hurl. His black
eyes flashed fire, and the grin of malice on his face showed all his
fine white teeth.

I was as mad as a boy can be. Instead of fleeing, I spurred my pony
straight at him.

"You little beast, I dare you to throw that rock at me! I dare you!" I
cried.

The boy dropped the missile and sped away after the girl. I followed in
time to see them enter a doorway, six or seven houses up the way. Then I
turned back, and in a minute I had overtaken our wagons trailing down to
the ford of the Santa Fe River.

"I thought mebby you'd gone back after Jondo and that holy podder," Rex
Krane greeted me. "Better begin to wink naturally and look a little
pleasanter now. We