et his body aslant and stopped
again quite as suddenly as before. Dade held out his hand, and Surry
came up and rubbed the palm playfully with his soft muzzle.

"For a camel, did you say?" Dade grinned triumphantly at the other
over the sleek back of his pet.

"What'll you take for him?"

Dade pulled the heavy forelock straight with fingers that caressed
with every touch. "Jose Pacheco asked me that, and I came pretty near
hitting him. I don't reckon I'll ever be drunk enough to name a price.
But I might--"

Jack glanced at him, and saw that his lips were half parted in a smile
born of some fancy of his own, and that his eyes were seeing dreams.
Jack stared for a full minute before Dade's thoughts jerked back to
his surroundings. Dade was not a dreamer; or if he were, Jack had
never had occasion to suspect him of it, and he wondered a little what
it was that had sent Dade into dreams at that hour of the morning.
But Manuel was returning, riding one pony and leading another; so Jack
threw away his cigarette stub and picked up the saddle blanket.

Manuel came up and saddled his mount silently, his deft fingers
working mechanically while his black eyes stole sidelong looks at
Jack saddling Surry, as if he would measure the man anew. While he was
anathematizing the buckskin in language for which he would need to do
a penance later on, if he confessed the blasphemy to the padre, Jack
threw Valencia's saddle upon the little sorrel pony Manuel had led up
for him to ride.

"Truly one would not like to die for having stolen such a beast,"
stated Manuel earnestly, knotting a macarte around the neck of the
buckskin. "He is only fit to carry men to hangings. Come, accursed
one! The Vigilantes are weeping for one so like themselves. Adios,
Senors!"

He rode away, still heaping opprobrium upon the reluctant buckskin,
and speedily he disappeared behind a clump of willows clothed in the
pale green of new leaves.

Dade dropped the bullock hide which served for a door, to signify that
the master of the house was absent. Though the old don's cattle might
be butchered under his very nose, Manuel's few belongings would not be
molested, though only the dingy brown hide of a bull long since gone
the way of all flesh barred the way; a week, one month or six the hut
would stand inviolate from despoliation; for such was the unwritten
law of a land where life was held cheaper than the things necessary to
preserve life.

On such a mor