nd ready from the
word 'Go.' Don't you think he's a little like Banks, you know--a sort of
Mexican edition. And there is Ruiz, he's a cattle dealer; he'd be a good
friend of Banks if Banks wasn't so infernally self-opinionated. But Ruiz
ain't a fool, either. He's picked up a little English--good American, I
mean--from me already."

Senor Ruiz here smiled affably, to show his comprehension; and added
slowly, with great gravity,--

"It is of twenty-four year I have first time the Amencano of your
beautiful country known. He have buy the hides and horns of the
cattle--for his ship--here."

"Here?" echoed Brace. "I thought no American ship--no ship at all--had
been in here for fifty years."

Ruiz shrugged his shoulders, and cast a glance at his friend Martinez,
lowered his voice and lifted his eyelashes at the same moment, and,
jerking his yellow, tobacco-stained thumb over his arm, said,--

"Ah--of a verity--on the beach--two leagues away."

"Do you hear that?" said Winslow, turning complacently to Brace and
rising to his feet. "Don't you see now what hogwash the Commander,
Alcalde, and the priest have been cramming down our throats about this
place being sealed up for fifty years. What he says is all Gospel truth.
That's what I wanted you fellows to hear, and you might have heard
before, only you were afraid of compromising yourselves by talking with
the people. You get it into your heads--and the Comandante helped you to
get it there--that Todos Santos was a sort of Sleepy Hollow, and that
no one knew anything of the political changes for the last fifty years.
Well, what's the fact? Ask Ruiz there, and Martinez, and they'll both
tell you they know that Mexico got her independence in 1826, and that
the Council keep it dark that they may perpetuate themselves. They
know," he continued, lowering his voice, "that the Commander's
commission from the old Viceroy isn't worth the paper it is stamped
upon."

"But what about the Church?" asked Brace hesitatingly, remembering
Banks' theory.

"The Church--caramba! the priests were ever with the Escossas, the
aristocrats, and against the Yorkenos, the men of the Republic--the
people," interrupted Martinez vehemently; "they will not accept, they
will not proclaim the Republic to the people. They shut their eyes,
so--. They fold their hands, so--. They say, 'Sicut era principio et
nunc et semper in secula seculorum!' Look you, Senor, I am not of the
Church--no, caramba! I sn