ned eagerly, hoping to learn
something definite about the Don's dealings with MacDougall, but the old
man never touched upon this. He did tell one story to which Ramon listened
with interest. He told how, twenty-five years before, he and another man
named Cristobal Archulera had found a silver mine in the Guadelupe
Mountains, and how he had cheated the other out of his interest by filing
the claim in his own name. He told this as a capital joke, laughing and
thumping his knee.

"Do you know where Archulera is now?" Ramon ventured to ask.

"Archulera? No, No; I have not seen Archulera for twenty years. I heard
that he married a very common woman, half Indian.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} I don't know what
became of him."

The last of the pool players had now gone out; a Mexican boy had begun to
sweep the floor; the place was about to close for the night. Ramon got his
uncle to his feet with some difficulty, and led him outdoors where he
looked about in vain for one of the cheap autos that served the town as
taxicabs. There were only three or four of them, and none of these were in
sight. The flat-wheeled street car had made its last screeching trip for
the night. There was nothing for it but to take the Don by the arm and
pilot him slowly homeward.

Refreshed by the night air, the old man partially sobered, walked with a
steady step, and talked more eloquently and profusely than ever. Women
were his subject now, and it was a subject upon which he had great store
of material. He told of the women of the South, of Sonora and Chihuahua
where he had spent much of his youth, of how beautiful they were. He told
of a slim little creature fifteen years old with big black eyes whom he
had bought from her _peon_ father, and of how she had feared him and how
he had conquered her and her fear. He told of slave girls he had bought
from the Navajos as children and raised for his pleasure. He told of a
French woman he had loved in Mexico City and how he had fought a duel with
her husband. He rose to heights of sentimentality and delved into depths
of obscenity, now speaking of his heart and what it had suffered, and
again leering and chuckling like a satyr over some tale of splendid
desire.

Ramon, walking silent and outwardly respectful by his side, listened to
all this with a strange mixture of envy and rage. He envied the old Don
the rich share he had taken of life's feast. Whatever else he might be the
Don was not one of those who