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With his employer in this temper he was half-inclined to run in the opposite direction. "Come here!" commanded the ranchman again. "Who gave you this?" rapping the open letter with a hairy forefinger. "I do not know, Capitan. A strange man si." "Never saw him before?" "No, Capitan. He was ver' strange to me," whined Victorino, too frightened to tell the truth.
"What did he look like?" shot back the Captain, holding himself in splendid control now. Only his eyes glittered and his lips under the big mustache tightened perceptibly. "He was beeg man, Capitan; rode bay pony; much wheeskers on face," declared Victorino, glibly. The Captain was silent for half a minute. Then he snapped: "Run find Silent Sam and tell him I want him pronto. Sabe?
His brows came together in a portentous frown; and perhaps for the first time in many years his bronzed countenance was washed over by the sickly pallor of fear. Victorino, stepping softly, had reached the compound gate.
Suddenly the forelegs of the ranchman's chair hit the floor of the veranda, and he roared at the Mexican in a voice that made the latter jump and drop the brown paper cigarette he had just deftly rolled. "You boy! Come back here!" called Captain Rugley. "I want to know what this means." "Me, Capitan?" asked Victorino, softly, and hesitated at the gate.
She and Pratt would have been immediately free. It was hours afterward indeed, almost sunset that old Captain Rugley, sitting on the broad veranda of the Bar-T ranch-house and expecting Frances to appear at any moment, raised his eyes to see, instead, Victorino Reposa slouching up the steps. "Hello, Vic!" said the Captain. "What do you want?"
Latin: Cicero, Quintilian, Martianus Capella, Curio Fortunatus, Mario Victorino, Victore, Emporio, Augustino, Ruffinus, Trapezuntius, P. Ramus, L. Vives, Soarez, J. C. Scaliger, Sturm, Strebaeus, Kechermann, Alstedius, N. Caussinus, J. G. Voss, A. Valladero." Whether Farnaby had read the works of these gentlemen through from cover to cover is another matter.
Now, unthinking and unknowing, he had been drawn by Ratty into a serious trouble. Victorino did not know what it was; but he trembled. He had never seen "El Capitan" look so fierce and strange before. Captain Dan Rugley seemed to forget his rheumatism. Excitement is often a strong mental corrective; and with his mind upon the dearest possession of his old age, the ranchman forgot all bodily ills.
Well, that's help enough, and San Soo can outdo himself on his dinner." "That part of it will be all right and the service, too, for José and Victorino are handy boys," admitted Frances. "We'll have out the best tableware we own. That silver stuff that came from Don Morales will knock their eyes out " "Oh, Daddy!" cried Frances, going off into a gale of laughter.
Victorino was scarcely out of the compound when the Captain had summoned Ming from the dining-room and San Soo from his pots and pans. "Put off dinner. Maybe we won't have any dinner to-night, San Soo," said the owner of the Bar-T. "We're in trouble. You and Ming shut the doors when I go out and bar them. Stand watch. Don't let a soul in unless I come back or Miss Frances appears.
He was the oldest of the Mexican boys employed at the Bar-T, and he had been very friendly with Ratty M'Gill while that reckless individual had belonged to the outfit. It was Victorino who had let Ratty drive the buckboard to the railroad station one particular day when the cowpuncher wished to meet his friend, Pete, at Cottonwood Bottom.
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