"Am I indiscreet in speaking as I did about this girl of the Busne? Did I not undress and dress her with my own hands?"

"But you need not tell these things to me. I think her beautiful to death!"

"Oh, you cannot love her!"

"Love her? I do not know."

"Ah, but if you once turned your eyes upon poor wistful me--chachipe!

you would soon know whether you loved me! I would make you hunger for me like a famished wolf, I would make your blood race and burn! When I danced the jota, or the Romalis, or merely moved languorously about, you would suffer all the thirsty bitterness of h.e.l.l, all the exalted sweets of heaven!"

Jacinto Quesada looked away.

"But I do not desire to love you, Paquita."

"Si, si; but ah, if you only would! Could you not love me only a little--you who are so proud and courageous, you who are so strong and absolute?"

Jacinto Quesada turned his head and plunged his austere glance into her deep yearning eyes.

"Paquita," he said, not coldly, but without any weakness of pity, "it is because I am strong and absolute that I cannot love you. When your eye caresses me with its look, your tongue with its subtle flattery, my masculinity rebels at the thought of being wooed by a woman; I am revolted, sickened! Fling your soul with the same impetuosity and pa.s.sion to some Gypsy lad, and he may love you; but I--no, never I!"

She groaned aloud, knowing full well that he spoke a primitive truth.

But she could not help yearning toward him, her face bloodless with desire.

Said he, "If you would but flee away from me, or shudder when your glance meets mine, or even treat me with disdain and coldness, perhaps then--who knows? But I must be the predatory one, the seeker, the stalker! Else I cannot love."

He made as if to rise. But before he could get upon his feet, she leaped up and bent above him and kissed him full upon the lips. Then swiftly and blindly she fled.

Once she had gone, Quesada did not bestir himself. He sat gazing morosely into the limpid tarn below his rock.

From a great distance, from away up in the mountains, there dropped down vaguely to his ears the ringing note of a pack of hounds in full cry.

Came also, every little while, the bark of rifles remote and far.

Quesada gave no heed to these sounds. All through the morning, the mountain airs had wafted through the barranca vagrant notes of this same refrain.

Very suddenly, however, Quesada heard, from much nearer at hand, the voices of men shouting and hallooing. He heard his own name called. The voices drew nearer. The shouting men were in the barranca itself; they were noisily proceeding through the rattling underwood. He heard them on the path above his nook by the pool, still calling his name. He did not lift his voice in reply, nor even turn his head. But suddenly, from the bushes within touch of his hand and right behind his head, a voice spoke out, sharply, peremptorily:

"Aupa, Don Jacinto! There is no time to be lost. Already they are entering the gateway to this barranca!"

Looking over his shoulder, Quesada saw, no more than a yard in the rear and peering through a hole in the bushes, an uncouth disheveled face like the face of a satyr or faun--the Gypsy-eyed, bronzed, and grizzle-bearded face of Pepe Flammenca.

"Of whom do you speak?" asked the bandolero.

Answered Pepe Flammenca; "Of Manuel Morales and his fantastic cabalgadores!"

CHAPTER XIV

"We chanced to look down from a great rock on the mountain above,"

explained Pepe Flammenca, as swiftly he and Quesada returned to the clearing, "and we saw them moving across the broad sallow face of the plain, like slow-crawling sticky flies. For quite a time we watched them, wondering if they would come this way. They approached across the high plains, making straight for the entrance to this barranca. They ascended the hills, and then I returned alone to warn you that they would be here shortly. My lads continued on without me. They will skulk along the fringe of the Senor Don Pablo's great monteria, and I am willing to swear they will not come back empty-handed."

"You counted the cabalgadores--there were nine?"

"Seguramente, yes. And the noses of their carbines flashed like leaping trout in the sun. And two wore scarlet, two yellow, and another green.

The green one was Morales himself, yes?"

Quesada nodded shortly.

"They did not ride with impetuosity, you say; they rode painfully slow?

We have still time then, friend Pepe, to make a clean get-away before they climb through the barranca. With but fifteen minutes' grace I will guarantee to show my heels to the fleetest caballeros in all the Spains!"

They entered the clearing. Before one of the tents of many colors sat Felicidad like a golden-headed queen. A little court of scantily clad, brown-limbed Gypsy toddlers were ringed about her, engaged in lisping the songs of the Zincali for her entertainment. The verses sounded very strange coming from those soft baby lips; for the words were all of love, ardent and free, of murder and revenge, and of theft and treachery.

His amber Moorish eyes liquid and softly glowing, Jacinto Quesada halted a few feet off, and watched her and listened. A tousle-headed urchin of nine, his only uniform an abbreviated and airy shirt, stepped forward and chanted, with gusto, "The Laws of Romany":

"O never with the Gentiles wend, Nor deem their speeches true; Or else, be certain in the end Thy blood will lose its hue.

"There runs a swine down yonder hill, As fast as e'er he can, And as he runs he crieth still, Come, steal me, Gypsy man.

"To blessed Jesus' holy feet I'd rush to kill and slay My plighted la.s.s so fair and sweet, Should she the wanton play.

"Thy sire and mother wrath and hate Have vowed against me, love!

The first, first night that from the gate We two together rove.

"The girl I love more dear than life, Should other gallant woo, I'd straight unsheath my dudgeon knife And cut his weasand through; Or he, the conqueror in the strife, The same to me should do.

"O, I am not of gentle clan, I'm sprung from Gypsy tree; And I will be no gentleman, But an Egyptian free."

Felicidad looked up and flushed to a carnation color under the ardor of his eyes. Then, looking away, she asked, "What is it, Jacinto?"

"Come, my Felicidad! The sun is already high in the sky; it will be thirsty-hot on the upper slopes of the mountains. Let us mount and ride."

Pepe Flammenca had gone through the underwood seeking Rafael Perez, Garcia, and Pio Estrada; he found them out behind the wagons, busily engaged in currycombing and burnishing their new horses. Now he returned with the three at his heels, himself and two of Quesada's dorados bearing a raffle of harness in their hands and saddles on their shoulders, and the third leading by their halters the five barebacked animals.

At once and swiftly, Quesada's ruffians commenced to cinch the saddles upon the horses. Despite haste, the work was done most efficiently.

Quesada called Pepe Flammenca aside. He had become possessed of a new idea. He and the Gypsy chieftain put their heads together. Then Quesada called Rafael Perez over to them with a beckon of the hand. Perez, too, joined in the low-whispered zipizape of words. An impudent and fantastic intrigue was plotted out, then and there, by that a.s.sorted trinity. As they separated again, Jacinto Quesada asked with sudden doubt:

"Will it be very difficult to change the appearance of Perez?"

"Not for Pepe Flammenca! Am I not of the Zincali? We of the Zincali can make a young horse seem old and decrepit, and an old horse show as much fire and hauteur as an unbroken stallion! And chachipe! we can change a black horse to white, and a piebald one to the color of tobacco! It is very simple, Don Jacinto, for the Children of Egypt."

"If you can make me pleasing to look at," chuckled Rafael Perez, "you will do wonders!"

Then he and Pepe Flammenca went together into the tent of the Gypsy chieftain, a more imposing tent than the others. His horse thereupon was led back behind the wagons and its harness hung upon the limb of a tree.

"Let us not tarry now. Aupa, you!" commanded Jacinto Quesada.