e've got the mine, of
course, but the town ought to go on growing, and lots should be a good
place to sink a thousand or two. I've got a little that ain't working."
Then seeing the inquiring look in the eyes of Don Andres, he explained
to him what Bill had suggested.

Don Andres nodded his white head approvingly. "The Senor Weelson is
right," he said. "You would do well, amigos, to heed his advice."

"Just as Jack says," Dade concluded; and Jack amended that statement by
saying it was just as Bill said. If Bill knew of a lot or two and
thought it would be a good investment, he could buy them in their names.
And Bill snorted at their absolute lack of business instinct and let the
subject drop into the background with the remark that, for men that had
come west with the gold fever, they surely did seem to care very little
about the gold they came after.

"The fun of finding it is good enough," declared Jack, unashamed, "so
long as we have all we need. And when we need more than we've got,
there's the mine; we can always find more. Just now--"

He waved his cigarette towards the darkening hills; and in the little
silence that followed they heard the sweet, high tenor of a vaquero
somewhere, singing plaintively a Spanish love-song. When the voice
trailed into a mournful, minor "Adios, adios," a robin down in the
orchard added a brief, throaty note of his own.

Bill sighed and eased his stiffened muscles in the big chair. "Well, I
don't blame either one of you," he drawled somewhat wistfully. "If I was
fifteen years limberer and fifty pounds slimmer, I dunno but what I'd
set into this ranch game myself. It's sure peaceful."

Foolishly they agreed that it was.

CHAPTER XIV

RODEO TIME

In those days of large leisure and cyclonic bursts of excitement and
activity; of midday siestas and moonlight serenades--and a duel,
perchance, at sunrise--the spring rodeo was one of the year's events, to
be looked forward to all winter by the vaqueros; and when it was over,
to be talked of afterwards for months. A mark from which to measure the
passing of time, it was; a date for the fixing of incidents in the
memory of men.

In the valley of Santa Clara, rodeo time really began when the Picardo
vaqueros cinched saddles upon restive mustangs some misty morning, and
with shouts and laughter and sombreros waving high over black heads in
adieu to those who remained behind, swept down the slope like a charge
of gayly caparis