cowardly coyote."
The vacquero struggled a moment between blank astonishment and
inarticulate rage. At last he burst out:--
"I am no coyote! I was there! I saw no runaway!"
"Don't lie to me, sir!" roared Peyton. "I tell you the buggy was
smashed, the girls were thrown out and nearly killed"--He stopped
suddenly. The sound of youthful laughter had come from the bottom of the
lane, where Susy Peyton and Mary Rogers, just alighted from the coach,
in the reaction of their previous constrained attitude, were flying
hilariously into view. A slight embarrassment crossed Peyton's face; a
still deeper flush of anger overspread Pedro's sullen cheek.
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,
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