She pointed to a slouching peon with a malevolent face, who was angrily driving the mustang toward the corral.

“Consider it no more!  I was rude!  Santa Maria!  I almost threw you, too; but,” she added, with a dazzling smile, “you must not punish me as you have her!  For you are very strong—­and you comprehend.”

But Grey did not comprehend, and with a few hurried apologies he managed to escape his fair but uncanny tormentor.  Besides, this unlooked-for incident had driven from his mind the more important object of his visit,—­the discovery of the assailants of Richards and Colonel Starbottle.

His inquiries of the Ramierez produced no result.  Senor Ramierez was not aware of any suspicious loiterers among the frequenters of the fonda, and except from some drunken American or Irish revelers he had been free of disturbance.

Ah! the peon—­an old vaquero—­was not an angel, truly, but he was dangerous only to the bull and the wild horses—­and he was afraid even of Cota!  Mr. Grey was fain to ride home empty of information.

He was still more concerned a week later, on returning unexpectedly one afternoon to his sanctum, to hear a musical, childish voice in the composing-room.

It was Cota!  She was there, as Richards explained, on his invitation, to view the marvels and mysteries of printing at a time when they would not be likely to “disturb Mr. Grey at his work.”  But the beaming face of Richards and the simple tenderness of his blue eyes plainly revealed the sudden growth of an evidently sincere passion, and the unwonted splendors of his best clothes showed how carefully he had prepared for the occasion.

Grey was worried and perplexed, believing the girl a malicious flirt.  Yet nothing could be more captivating than her simple and childish curiosity, as she watched Richards swing the lever of the press, or stood by his side as he marshaled the type into files on his “composing-stick.”  He had even printed a card with her name, “Senorita Cota Ramierez,” the type of which had been set up, to the accompaniment of ripples of musical laughter, by her little brown fingers.

The editor might have become quite sentimental and poetical had he not noticed that the gray eyes which often rested tentatively and meaningly on himself, even while apparently listening to Richards, were more than ever like the eyes of the mustang on whose scarred flanks her glance had wandered so coldly.

He withdrew presently so as not to interrupt his foreman’s innocent tete-a-tete, but it was not very long after that Cota passed him on the highroad with the pinto horse in a gallop, and blew him an audacious kiss from the tips of her fingers.

For several days afterwards Richards’s manner was tinged with a certain reserve on the subject of Cota which the editor attributed to the delicacy of a serious affection, but he was surprised also to find that his foreman’s eagerness to discuss his unknown assailant had somewhat abated.  Further discussion regarding it naturally dropped, and the editor was beginning to lose his curiosity when it was suddenly awakened by a chance incident.