thern slope.

"Good-by, honey. Come again and see me. Jerry knows a few Spanish
words, and I'll make him learn 'em to me so I can talk a little of
your kind, next time. And tell your mother I'm obliged for the wine;
and them dried peaches tasted fine, after being without so long.
Shan't I hold your horse while you git on? Seems to me he's pretty
frisky for a girl to be riding; but I guess you're equal to him!"

Teresita smiled vaguely. She had no idea of what the woman was saying,
and she was beginning to wish that she had not tried in just this
way to punish the Senor Jack; if he were here now, he could make the
Senora Simpson understand that the storm would be a very dreadful
one--else Gustavo was a liar, and whom should one believe?

Even while she was coaxing Tejon alongside a log and persuading him to
stand so until she was in the saddle, she was generously forswearing
Senor Jack's punishment that she might serve the pretty senora who had
Tejon by the bit and was talking to him softly in words he had never
heard before in his life. She resolved that if she met Senor Jack, she
would ask him to come back with her and explain to the senora about
the cold and the rain, and urge her to accept the hospitality of her
neighbors.

For that reason she looked more anxiously than before for some sign
of him riding towards her through the fields of flowering mustard that
heaved in the wind like the waves on some strange, lemon-colored sea
tossing between high, green islands of oak and willow. Surely that
fool Diego would never keep the still tongue! He would tell, when some
one missed her. If he did not, or if Senor Allen was an obstinate pig
of a man and would not come, then she would tell Senor Hunter, who was
always so kind, though not so handsome as the other, perhaps.

Senor Hunter's eyes were brown--and she had looked into brown eyes
all her life. But the blue! The blue eyes that could so quickly change
lighter or darker that they bewildered one; and could smile, or light
flames that could wither the soul of one.

Even the best rider among the Spanish girls as far south as Paso
Robles should not meditate so deeply upon the color of a senor's eyes
that she forgets the horse she is riding, especially when the horse is
Tejon, whose heart is full of wickedness.

A coyote, stalking the new-made nest of a quail, leaped out of the
mustard and gave Tejon the excuse he wanted, and the dreaming senorita
was nearly unseated