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Two had quite disappeared, or else the brilliant play of light had melted them into the golden carpet of reflected sunshine on which they rested. Directly, Jack saw two figures creeping over the rim of the pasturage basin. "So, that's it!" he said to Firio. Firio nodded his understanding of Leddy's plan to take them in flank under cover of the arroyo.
Apparently, Sir Chaps had been disinclined to disturb the routine of camp by telling Firio anything about the duel. "Where did he go? In which direction?" Mary persisted. Firio moved the coffee-pot closer to the fire. This seemed to require the concentration of all his faculties, including that of speech. He was a fit servant for one who took duels so casually. "Where? Where?" she repeated.
If Jack would not talk Firio would. Yes, he would ask a question, just to hear the sound of a voice. "We go to fight?" "No, Firio." "Not to fight Prather?" "No." "To fight Leddy?" "I hope not." "Why we go? Why so why so " he had not the language to express the strange, brooding inquiry of his mind. "I go to save Little Rivers." "Sí!" said Firio, but as if this did not answer his question.
"Yes" a bare, echoing monosyllable. He stepped to one side to let Firio and his little cavalcade pass. All the while she continued to look at him through the screen of her half-closed lashes in a way that set her repose and charm apart as something precious and cold and baffling.
"And beyond that how many miles to the water-hole?" "Five or six." But Firio knew a way around where the going was good. It made a difference of two or three miles in distance against them, but two or three times that in their favor in time and the strength taken out of their ponies. "How long will Prather be in getting through the sand?" Jack asked.
"I'll have to finish this story later," said Jack, sending the youngsters on their way, while he went his own to call to Firio, as he entered the yard: "Son of the sun, I feel so strong that I am going for a ride!" "You wear the big spurs and the grand chaps?" Firio asked. Jack hesitated thoughtfully. "No, just plain togs," he answered. "I think we will hang up that circus costume as a souvenir.
There was a resonance in his tone, a liveliness to his expression, that was infectious. "But Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God wait for me," Jack said, entering with real enjoyment into the grandiose style. "High sounding company, sir! Let me see them!" demanded Jasper Ewold. Jack pointed to his cavalcade waiting in the half shadows, where the lamp-rays grew thin.
Oh, I want to read it!" With an unexplored land between gilt-tooled covers under his arm he went upstairs early, in the transport of wanderlust that had sent him away over the sand from Little Rivers. Sí, sí, Firio, outward bound, camp under the stars!
"Sancho was fat and unresourceful; even stupid. Fancy him broiling a quail on a spit! Fancy what a lot of trouble Firio could have saved Don Quixote de la Mancha! Why, confound it, he would have spoiled the story!" Firio was a solid grain, to take Jack's view, winnowed out of bushels of aboriginal chaff; an Indian, all Indian, without any strain of Spanish blood in the primitive southern strain.
As Prather reached up a trembling hand to take his rifle from the back of his burro one of the lumps around the water-hole rose, possibly to change position. When it became the silhouette of a kneeling man, Jack fired and the figure plunged forward like an automaton that had had its back broken. "Eight!" whispered Firio. "Duck!"
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