. A party of men who had been to Sulaco
with a herd of black bulls for the next corrida had reported that from
the porch of the posada in Rincon, only a short league from the town,
the lights on the mountain were visible, twinkling above the trees. And
there was a woman seen riding a horse sideways, not in the chair seat,
but upon a sort of saddle, and a man's hat on her head. She walked
about, too, on foot up the mountain paths. A woman engineer, it seemed
she was.

"What an absurdity! Impossible, senor!"

"_Si! Si! Una Americana del Norte_."

"Ah, well! if your worship is informed. _Una Americana_; it need be
something of that sort."

And they would laugh a little with astonishment and scorn, keeping a
wary eye on the shadows of the road, for one is liable to meet bad men
when travelling late on the Campo.

And it was not only the men that Don Pepe knew so well, but he seemed
able, with one attentive, thoughtful glance, to classify each woman,
girl, or growing youth of his domain. It was only the small fry that
puzzled him sometimes. He and the padre could be seen frequently side by
side, meditative and gazing across the street of a village at a lot
of sedate brown children, trying to sort them out, as it were, in low,
consulting tones, or else they would together put searching questions
as to the parentage of some small, staid urchin met wandering, naked and
grave, along the road with a cigar in his baby mouth, and perhaps his
mother's rosary, purloined for purposes of ornamentation, hanging in a
loop of beads low down on his rotund little stomach. The spiritual and
temporal pastors of the mine flock were very good friends. With Dr.
Monygham, the medical pastor, who had accepted the charge from Mrs.
Gould, and lived in the hospital building, they were on not so intimate
terms. But no one could be on intimate terms with El Senor Doctor, who,
with his twisted shoulders, drooping head, sardonic mouth, and side-long
bitter glance, was mysterious and uncanny. The other two authorities
worked in harmony. Father Roman, dried-up, small, alert, wrinkled,
with big round eyes, a sharp chin, and a great snuff-taker, was an old
campaigner, too; he had shriven many simple souls on the battlefields of
the Republic, kneeling by the dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in
the gloom of the forests, to hear the last confession with the smell
of gunpowder smoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum
and spatter of bulle