Chapter 8

Lawrence Glass was beginning to like New Mexico. Not only did it afford a tinge of romance, discernable in the deep, haunting eyes of Mariedetta, the maid, but it offered an opportunity for financial advancement--as, for instance, the purchase of Willie's watch. This timepiece cost the trainer twenty-one dollars, and he sold it to Speed for double the amount, believing in the luck of even numbers. Nor did young Speed allow his trainer's efforts to cease here, for in every portable timepiece on the ranch he recognized a menace, and not until Lawrence had cornered the market and the whole collection was safely locked in his trunk did he breathe easily. This required two days, during which the young people at the ranch enjoyed themselves thoroughly. They were halcyon days for the Yale man, for Fresno was universally agreeable, and seemed resigned to the fact that Helen should prefer his rival's company to his own. Even when Speed had regretfully dragged himself off to bed in the evening, the plump tenor amused Miss Blake by sounding the suitor's praises as an athlete, reports of which pleased Wally intensely. Mr. Fresno was a patient person, who realized fully the fact that a fall is not painful unless sustained from a considerable height.

As for Glass, he recounted tales of Mariedetta's capitulation to his employer, and wheezed merrily over the discomfiture of the Mexican girl's former admirers.

"She's a swell little dame," he confided to Speed one afternoon, as they lounged luxuriously in the shade at their customary resting-place. "Yes, and I'm aces with her, too." They had set out for their daily run, and were now contesting for the seven-up supremacy of the Catskill Mountains. Already Glass had been declared the undisputed champion of the Atlantic Coast, while Speed on the day previous had wrested from him the championship of the Mississippi Valley.

"But Mariedetta is dark!" said the college man, as he cut the cards. "She is almost a mulatto."

"Naw! She's no dinge. She's an Aztec, an' them Aztec's is swell people. Say, she can play a guitar like a barber!"

"Miss Blake told me she was in love with Carara."

Glass grunted contemptuously. "I've got it on that insurrects four ways. Why, I'm learning to talk Spanish myself. If he gets flossy, I'll cross one over his bow." The trainer made a vicious jab at an imaginary Mexican. "He ain't got a good wallop in him."

Like all New Yorkers, no matter what their station, Lawrence cherished a provincial contempt for such people as are not of Manhattan. While he was woefully timid in the presence of firearms, and the flash of steel reduced him to a panic, he was a past master at the "manly art," and carried a punch in which he reposed unlimited faith. The deference with which the cowboys treated him, their simple, child-like faith in his every