Then Pedro found tongue again, his native one, rapidly, violently, half incoherently.  “Ah, yes!  It had come to this.  It seems he was not a vacquero, a companion of the padrone on lands that had been his own before the Americanos robbed him of it, but a servant, a lackey of muchachas, an attendant on children to amuse them, or—­why not?—­an appendage to his daughter’s state!  Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such a muchacha!  A picked-up foundling—­a swineherd’s daughter—­to be ennobled by his, Pedro’s, attendance, and for whose vulgar, clownish tricks,—­tricks of a swineherd’s daughter,—­he, Pedro, was to be brought to book and insulted as if she were of Hidalgo blood!  Ah, Caramba!  Don Juan Peyton would find he could no more make a servant of him than he could make a lady of her!”

The two young girls were rapidly approaching.  Judge Peyton spurred his horse beside the vacquero’s, and, swinging the long thong of his bridle ominously in his clenched fingers, said, with a white face:—­

“Vamos!”

Pedro’s hand slid towards his sash.  Peyton only looked at him with a rigid smile of scorn.

“Or I’ll lash you here before them both,” he added in a lower voice.

The vacquero met Peyton’s relentless eyes with a yellow flash of hate, drew his reins sharply, until his mustang, galled by the cruel bit, reared suddenly as if to strike at the immovable American, then, apparently with the same action, he swung it around on its hind legs, as on a pivot, and dashed towards the corral at a furious gallop.

CHAPTER III.

Meantime the heroic proprietor of the peaceful ox-team, whose valor Incarnacion had so infelicitously celebrated, was walking listlessly in the dust beside his wagon.  At a first glance his slouching figure, taken in connection with his bucolic conveyance, did not immediately suggest a hero.  As he emerged from the dusty cloud it could be seen that he was wearing a belt from which a large dragoon revolver and hunting knife were slung, and placed somewhat ostentatiously across the wagon seat was a rifle.  Yet the other contents of the wagon were of a singularly inoffensive character, and even suggested articles of homely barter.  Culinary utensils of all sizes, tubs, scullery brushes, and clocks, with several rolls of cheap carpeting and calico, might have been the wares of some traveling vender.  Yet, as they were only visible through a flap of the drawn curtains of the canvas hood, they did not mitigate the general aggressive effect of their owner’s appearance.  A red bandanna handkerchief knotted and thrown loosely over his shoulders, a slouched hat pulled darkly over a head of long tangled hair, which, however, shadowed a round, comfortable face, scantily and youthfully bearded, were part of these confusing inconsistencies.