end of his journey, when he must cover
the distance with his own feet. Eight or ten miles, he estimated it
roughly; for he had passed Jose's hacienda some time before, and had
resisted the temptation to turn aside and find out if Manuel were there
or had gone on. He had not passed Manuel in the trail as he had boasted
that he would do, and not once had he glimpsed him anywhere, though
there had been places where the road lay straight, and he could see it
clear in the moonlight for a mile or more.

When he had finished the cigarette and his thanks to Fate--or whatever
power had delayed him--he removed his saddle and bridle from the horse
and went on; and it was then that he began to understand that he must do
a penance for desiring war rather than peace amongst his fellows.
Valencia, after the first hour of tramping with his saddle on his
shoulders, had lost a good deal of his enthusiasm for the duel he felt
sure was already a certainty.

When he left the road for a straight cut to the hacienda, the wild range
cattle hindered him with their curiosity, so that, using all the methods
known to a seasoned vaquero for driving them back, his progress had been
slow. But he finally came out into the road again and was plodding along
the stone wall within half a mile of the house, his face very
disconsolate because of his protesting feet and the emptiness in his
stomach, when Manuel himself confronted him suddenly coming from the
house.

Manuel was looking well pleased with himself, in spite of his night
ride. He pulled up and stared wide-eyed at Valencia, who had no smile
with which to greet him but swore instead a pensive oath.

"Dios! Is it for a wager that you travel thus?" grinned Manuel,
abominably comfortable upon a great, sorrel horse that pranced all round
Valencia in its anxiety to be upon its way home. "Look you, Valencia!
Since you are travelling, you had best go and tell the padres to make
ready the sacrament for your gringo friend, that blue-eyed one; for
truly his time on earth is short!"

Valencia, at that, looked up into Manuel's face and smiled in spite of
the pain in his feet and the emptiness in his stomach.

"Does it please you, then, Valencia? All night I rode to bear a message
to that blue-eyed one who thinks himself supremo in all things; a
challenge from Don Jose, to fight a duelo if he is not a coward; so did
Jose write. 'Unless you are afraid to meet me'--and the vanity of that
blue-eyed one is