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An admirable method for securing Gallito's consent to his daughter's acceptance of this professional engagement which Hanson offered. But, carefully considered, it had its flaws, and Hanson was not the man to overlook them. Indeed, he sat there in a baffled and furious silence, going over them mentally and viewing them from every possible angle.
He had leaned out from the sheltering wall and was scanning with a measuring and speculative eye the white heap that rose from the edge of the cañon and seemed almost to touch the lowering and sullen sky. "Thank God, the camp is safe," he murmured. "The cañon must have saved it, or else it would have been wiped off the earth just as Gallito's cabin has been.
It would be another matter to define correctly the motives that impelled that debonair bandit to stand by her side so manfully in the face of Gallito's wrath and reiterated prohibitions. It might have been a conscientious wish to earn the jewels, over the possession of which he had not ceased to gloat, or it might have been an impish desire to annoy Gallito.
He was careful, though, not to mention his hopes until near midnight, when Gallito's normally harsh mood was greatly softened not only by winning the final game, which José invariably permitted now, but also by the mellowing influence of his bland, old cognac. Then Gallito would embark on an argument, determined to convince José of the wild folly of his desire.
But if Seagreave sat silent and absorbed when he came to Gallito's cabin in the evening, it did not bother Pearl. She was an expert in such symptoms. Sometimes he talked to her in a rather constrained fashion, but for the most part he sat on the other side of the room, listening to Hugh's music.
As Bob Flick whispered the scheme to the two men the gloom deepened on Gallito's face. It seemed to him too comprehensive and efficacious to evade. But Harry did not share his depression. As he listened his face changed and set. In his eyes was a flash like sunlight on steel. He was the old Seagreave again whom José had once described to Gallito.
"I have far sight and near sight and the sight which comes to the seventh child," returned José with pride. "Therefore, seeing what I see, I say my prayers each day, now." A bleak smile wrinkled Gallito's parchment-like cheeks. "And to whom do you pray, José, your patron saint, or rather sinner, the Devil?" José looked shocked.
There had undoubtedly been some one, some one whose interest it was not to be caught, as the events of the previous night showed, but the explanation they had all given, Flick, Gallito, Hugh, Seagreave and the women, had struck the sheriff as extremely plausible, far more plausible, in fact, than Hanson's story that Crop-eared José had been secreted for months at a time in Gallito's cabin.
To-night the very sight of the supper set before him softened Gallito's harsh face.
He's got more old Spaniards around" she raised her eyes "and they're the awfullest! Cut-throats and pirates, I call 'em. They come up from the coast. And it's funny, too," she exclaimed in a sort of querulous wonder, "because Gallito's awful respectable himself." "That is queer, isn't it?"
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