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This assurance of the knowing Indian quite restored Don Pablo's confidence, and they talked no longer on the subject. After a while, their attention was again called to the vultures. These filthy creatures had returned to the deer, and were busily gorging themselves, when, all at once, they were seen to rise up as if affrighted.
Edward laughed at this blunt observation of Pablo's, and replied, "It is very true, Pablo, that I can not watch over my sisters, and protect them in person, when I am away; but there are reasons why I should go, nevertheless, and I may be more useful to them by going than by remaining with them. If I did not think so, I would not leave them. They know nobody, and have no friends in the world.
But the children saw that Don Pablo's face was strangely flushed, that his eyes were wild and his magnificent beard was wet with wine; therefore they hung back. "You won your bet fairly," Esteban growled at him. "Pay no heed to these babies." "Evangelina is ours," the little ones bravely repeated. Then their father exploded: "The devil! Am I dreaming? Where have you learned to oppose me?
Pablo's heart swelled with agony. "It has happened!" he murmured. "Ah, Mother of God! It has happened!" Two more shots in rapid succession sounded from the valley. "He makes certain of his kill," thought Pablo. After a while he addressed the off front foot of the black mare. "I will do likewise." He started crawling on his belly up out of the draw to the crest of the hog's back.
Don Pablo's pistols were all the fire-arms they had, and Guapo had no other weapon than his machete. With their present means, then, there was very little chance of their killing any game, even should they have fallen in with it. But they saw none as yet, except some birds, such as parrots, macaws, and toucans, that fluttered among the leaves.
However, little time was given for looking around us, for our guard hurried us El Sabio following close at Pablo's heels across the court-yard to a door-way at its farther side, before which hung in heavy folds a curtain of some sort of thick black cloth.
Back in the office, he flung his hat on the table and rumpled his hair. "Those coyotes," he said casually, "are after some one called Waring. Pablo's whiskey is rotten." The collector's long legs unfolded, and he sat up, yawning. "Jim Waring isn't in town," he said as though to himself. "Pat, you give me a pain," said the assistant, grinning. "Got one myself," said the collector unsmilingly.
At seven-thirty, he had not appeared, and she grew impatient and strolled round to the other side of the hacienda. Before Pablo's casa, she saw the red end of a cigarette; so she knew that Pablo also watched. "I must see him first," she decided. "Pablo's heart is right toward Don Mike, but resentful toward us. I do not want him to pass that resentment on to his master."
Just at this critical instant it was that Fray Antonio dashed into the thick of the fighting, and covered Pablo's body with his own against this assault in the rear; so that, as the Indian struck, the knife only cut through the monk's habit and slightly scratched his arm, instead of making a hole between Pablo's shoulder-blades that would have let the life out of him.
"I'll have that dusky imp for an exercise boy," he announced. "He's built like an aeroplane all superstructure and no solids." For a month the training of Panchito went on each morning. Pablo's grandson, under Danny Leighton's tuition, proved an excellent exercise boy.
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