ney,"
she said simply, "and I've left all of mine so far behind me they
might as well be dead, as far as ever seeing 'em again is concerned;
so it's like finding gold to find a woman friend away out here. I
ain't casting no reflections on Jerry, mind," she hastened to
warn them, blinking the tears away and leaving the twinkle in full
possession; "but good as he is, and satisfying as his company is, he
ain't a woman. And, my dear, a woman does get awful hungry sometimes
for woman-talk!"

[Illustration: Mrs. Jerry took the senorita's hand and smiled up at
her.]

"Santa Maria! that must be true. She shall come and let my mother be
her friend also. I will send a carriage, or if she can ride--ask the
big senor if he has no horses!"

Jack it was who took up right willingly the burden of translation, for
the pure pleasure of repeating the senorita's words and doing her a
service; and Dade dropped back beside the don, where he thought he
belonged, and stayed there.

"Wall, I ain't got any horses, but I got two of the derndest mules you
ever seen, mister. Moll and Poll's good as any mustang in this valley.
Mary and me can ride 'em anywheres; that's why I brung 'em along, to
ride in case we had to eat the cattle."

"Then they must surely ride Moll and Poll to visit my mother!" the
senorita declared with her customary decisiveness. "Padre mio!"

Obediently the don accepted the responsibility laid upon him by
his sole-born who ruled him without question, and made official the
invitation. It was not what he had expected to do; he was not quite
sure that it was what he wanted to do; but he did it, and did it
with the courtliness which would have flowered his invitation to
the governor to honor his poor household by his presence; he did it
because his daughter had glanced at him and said "My father?" in a
certain tone which he knew well.

Something else was done, which no one had expected to do when the four
galloped up to the trespassers. Jack and Dade dismounted and helped
Jerry unload the logs from the wagon, for one thing; while Teresita
inspected Mrs. Jerry's ingenious domestic makeshifts and managed
somehow, with Mrs. Jerry's help, to make the bond of mutual liking
serve very well in the place of intelligible speech. For another, the
don fairly committed himself to the promise of a peon or two to help
in the further devastation of the trees upon the Picardo mountain
slope behind the little, natural meadow, which Jerry