better
go back to the city."

There was a dead silence here, and the little party grouped about
between a small umbrella-shaped tent and the dying embers of the fire,
at which a meal of savoury antelope steaks had lately been cooked,
carefully avoided glancing one at the other.

Just inside the entrance of the tent, a pretty, slightly-made girl of
about seventeen was seated, busily plying her needle in the repair of
some rents in a pair of ornamented loose leather leggings that had
evidently been making acquaintance with some of the thorns of the rugged
land. She was very simply dressed, and, though wearing the high comb
and depending veil of a Spanish woman, her complexion, tanned is it was,
and features, suggested that she was English, as did also the speech of
the fine athletic middle-aged man who had just been speaking.

His appearance, too, was decidedly Spanish, for he wore the short jacket
with embroidered sleeves, tight trousers--made very wide about the leg
and ankle-sash, and broad sombrero of the Mexican-Spanish inhabitant of
the south-western regions of the great American continent.

The man addressed was a swarthy-looking half-breed, who lay upon the
parched earth, his brow rugged, his eyes half-closed, and lips pouted
out in a surly, resentful way, as if he were just about to speak and say
something nasty.

Three more men of a similar type were lying beside and behind, all
smoking cigarettes, which from time to time they softly rolled up and
lighted with a brand at the fire, as they seemed to listen to the
conversation going on between the bronzed Englishman and him who had
been addressed as Joses.

They were all half-breeds, and boasted of their English blood, but
always omitted to say anything about the Indian fluid that coursed
through their veins; while they followed neither the fashion of
Englishman nor Indian in costume, but, like the first speaker, were
dressed as Spaniards, each also wearing a handkerchief of bright colour
tied round his head and beneath his soft hat, just as if a wound had
been received, with a long showy blanket depending from the shoulder,
and upon which they now half lay.

There was another present, however, also an anxious watcher of the
scene, and that was a well-built youth of about the same age as the
girl. For the last five minutes he had been busily cleaning his rifle
and oiling the lock; and this task done, he let the weapon rest with its
butt upon the rocky