They would fight, those two, and fight to kill.  Since the world was first peopled, men had fought as they would fight—­for love; for the possession of a pretty thing—­warm, capricious, endearing, with possibly a heart and a soul beneath; possibly.  And love—­what was love, after all?  What is love worth?  He had loved her, too; at least, he had felt all the emotions that either of them had felt for her.  He was not sure that he did not still feel them, or would if he let himself go.  He did not believe, however, that those emotions were worth more than everything else in the world; more than his life, or honor, or friendship.  He had choked love, strangled it, starved it for sake of friendship; and, sitting there staring abstractedly into the filming coals, he wondered if he had done wrong; if those two were right, and love was worth fighting for.

The man who fought the hardest, he felt, would in this case win that for which he fought.  For he felt in his heart, that Teresita was only a pretty little animal, the primitive woman who would surrender to strength; and that he would win in the end who simply refused to yield before her coquetries.

With a quick, impatient gesture he threw his cigarette into the coals, kicked viciously a lazily smoking brand which sent up a little blaze and a spurt of sparks that died almost immediately to dull coals again.

“Love’s like that,” he muttered pessimistically, standing up and stretching his arms mechanically.  “And the winner loses in the end; maybe not always, but he will in this case.  Poor old Jack!  After all, she ain’t worth it.  If she was—­” His chin went down for a minute or two, while he stared again at the fire.  “If she was, I’d—­But she ain’t.  Love’s worth—­what is love worth, anyway?”

He did not answer the question with any degree of positiveness, and he went to bed wishing that he had never seen the valley of Santa Clara.

CHAPTER XIX

ANTICIPATION

To give a clear picture of the preparations for that fiesta, one should be able to draw with strokes as swift as the horses that galloped up and down the valley at the behest of riders whose minds titillated with whatever phase of the fiesta appealed to them most; and paint with colors as vivid as were the dreams of the women, from the peonas in the huts to the senoritas and senoras murmuring behind the shelter of their vines.

One would need tell of those who went boldly into the mountains to find a grizzly bear and bring it alive and unhurt to the pen, which the peons, with feverish zeal and much chattering amongst themselves, were building close beside the smallest corral.

A great story it would make—­the tale of that hunt!  A man came back from it with a forearm torn sickeningly, to show how brave he had been.  And the bear came also—­a great, gaunt she-bear with two cubs whimpering beside her in the cage, and in her eyes a sullen hunger for the giant redwoods that stood so straight and strong together upon the steep slopes while they sang crooningly the songs she knew of old, and a glowing hatred for her captors.