Chapter 17

A FIESTA WE SHALL HAVE

Jack, unfolding the crumpled paper, read twice the note from Dade, and at each reading gave a little snort. He folded the paper, unfolded it and read again:

"Dear Jack,

"If José wants to fight, take a fool's advice and don't. Better quit the ranch and go back to town for a while--Valencia will get there ahead of Manuel, he says, and you can pull out before Manuel shows up. A licking might do José good, but it would stir up a lot of trouble and raise hell all around, so crawl into any hole you come to. I'll quit as soon as rodeo is over, and meet you in town. Now don't be bull-headed. Let your own feelings go into the discard for once, and do what's best for the whole valley. Everything's going smooth here. Noah's dove ain't got any the best of me and José, and the boys are working fine.

"Dade."

"At least your majordomo agrees with you, Don Andres," he said, twisting the note unthinkingly in his fingers. "Dade wants me to sneak off to town and hide in Bill Wilson's cellar." There was more resentment in his tone than the note itself had put there; for the argument which Valencia had unwittingly interrupted had been threatening to become acrimonious.

"My majordomo," replied Don Andres, his habitual courtesy just saving the words from becoming a retort, "continues to show that rare good sense which first attracted me to him."

The señora moved uneasily in her chair and smiled deprecatingly at Jack, then imploringly at her husband. This was washing day, and those shiftless ones within would overlook half the linen unless she was on the spot to watch and direct. But these two had come to their first clash of wills, and her husband had little liking for such firm defiance of his wishes. Well she knew the little weather-signs in his face. When his eyebrows took just that tilt, and when the nostrils were drawn in and quivered with his breathing, then was it wise that she should remain by his side. The señora knew well that words are never so harsh between the male of our species when their women are beside them. So, suffering mental torment because of the careless peonas, she, nevertheless, sent Teresita after the fine, linen apron from which she meant to remove a whole two inches of woof for the new pattern of drawnwork which the Donna Lucia had sent her. She would remain as a buffer between these two whose eyes were too hard when they looked at each other.

"It seems a pity that young men nowadays cannot contain themselves without quarreling," sighed the señora, acting upon the theory that anger is most dangerous when it is silent, and so giving the conversational ball a push.

"Is there no way, Señor, in which you might avert this trouble? Truly it saddens me to think of it, for José has been as my own