ing, a half-cringing gladness, as a dog goes to meet a harsh master. Greetings in that labial, mouthy speech to which the Castilian has degenerated among the Mexicans of the low caste, passed between them.
Barrett, not quitting his watchfulness, went on with his preparations to wash. His hand was on the water pail when Findlay turned to him, face black with displeasure, a curse on his thin lips.
"Put that horse away!" he ordered sharply.
Perhaps out of habit of long discipline Barrett did not hesitate, much as he resented the manner of the command. He sprang with the nimbleness of his years on deck to take Findlay's horse, his quick response, his very willingness, at once an apology for his apparent neglect of duty. Not that it was in fact a neglect of duty, for his service as wrangler did not include the unsaddling and turning out of any man's horse, let him be high or low. But Barrett did not want the enmity of this dark man to deepen against him for any act of his own.
The one-thumbed mestizo stood talking with Findlay a little while. The superintendent seemed to hear him with indifference as he turned up his sleeves and opened his collar to wash, dismissing him presently as he would a fawning dog. All this Barrett marked as he stripped the saddle from the hard-ridden horse. The mestizo withdrew a little way, where he stood smoking, something indomitable in his way of standing immobile, unruffled, villainously serene, as one appointed by fate waiting with certitude his hour.
Fred Grubb was not around the corral, nor at the
