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Updated: June 9, 2025
But so far as mere physical beauty goes, there never was a king born, whose face, stature, and bearing would set off a crown or a throne, or any of the things of which the outside of royalty is made up, better than would Felipe Moreno's. And it was true, as the Senora said, whether the saints had anything to do with it or not, that he had the face of his father.
I wish I could ferget 'em but I've been fightin' these sheep so long and gittin' so mean and ugly them flowers wouldn't mean no more to me now than a bunch of jimson weeds and stink squashes. But hell, what's the use?" He threw out his hands once more, palms up, and dropped them limply. "That's old Pablo Moreno's place down there," he said, falling back abruptly into his old way.
"This is Greaser work," he cried. "How could they have left you alive? Where are Moreno's people? Who's done this, anyhow?" "Pasqual Morales. Moreno was in it, too. 'Twas the paymaster they were laying for; but they've killed Ned Harvey and got his sisters, old Harvey's children from Tucson." "What?" cried the officer, leaping to his feet. "Harvey's daughters here? here? Man, are you mad?"
Will you deliver his message?" "Just as you say; why shouldn't you?" "It'll have so much more effect from your lips, major. They may misdoubt me." Far out on the trail the quick-tripping hoofs of mules could now be heard. Presently a horseman shot up out of the gloom. "Halt there!" sung out Feeny. "Whose party's this?" "Harvey's, Tucson. Looking for Moreno's. Are we near?"
The broad sweep of her brow, her penetrating gaze, her straight nose, high cheek bones and delicately molded lips and chin and grace of her supple, sinuous body, together with the picturesqueness of her costume, presented a picture of striking beauty. "Why," he continued abruptly, "you are the woman that danced at Carlos Moreno's! The Señorita Chiquita about whom the whole town is talking!"
Springing into the walled enclosure and bidding Harvey watch while the others worked, he had soon succeeded in lugging a score of big barley-sacks into the interior and piling them into breastworks at the three doors, the one opening into the corral being provided in addition with a high "traverse" to protect its guard against shots that might come through from Moreno's room.
Then came the click of iron-shod hoofs, the crack of the long mule-whip, and a resonant imprecation in Spanish levelled at the invisible draught animals. Bounding lightly down the southward path, Sergeant Wing soon reached the roadside, and there found Pike in converse with a brace of horsemen. "It's old Harvey's outfit, from Yuma, making for Moreno's," vouchsafed the soldier.
They turned aside, and supped late and poorly, very much against Sancho's will, who turned over in his mind the hardships attendant upon knight-errantry in woods and forests, even though at times plenty presented itself in castles and houses, as at Don Diego de Miranda's, at the wedding of Camacho the Rich, and at Don Antonio Moreno's; he reflected, however, that it could not be always day, nor always night; and so that night he passed in sleeping, and his master in waking.
There in the fierce light of the flames now bursting from every window and roaring and shooting high in air from the brush-heaped roof of Moreno's ranch, there stood the Concord wagon, stalwart men clinging to the heads of the plunging and excited mules, a big ruffian already in the driver's seat, whip and reins in hand; there beside it was the paymaster's ambulance, into which three of the gang were just shoving the green-painted iron safe, the Pandora's box that had caused all their sorrows; there Moreno's California buck-board, pressed into service and being used to carry the wounded, drawn by the extra mules; and then God of heaven! what a sight for brother's eyes to see and make no sign! then one big brute lifted from the ground and handed up to a fellow already ensconced within the covered wagon the senseless, perhaps lifeless, form of pretty little Ruth, his father's idol.
It was at this juncture that from somewhere in the middle room behind Moreno's heavy door a voice was heard. "Hand out the safe. Hand out your money now and we'll leave you in peace. Every man of us will ride away, and you can come out as soon as we are gone. Answer, for you have no time to lose." "Answer him, you!" shouted Feeny to Mr. Dawes. "Send a shot through and hit him if you can."
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