"I will try with that," said the nephew. "Now let me have a few good men
and your best horses. I want to see them all before I trust myself with
them."

Coronado felt himself in a position to dictate, and it was curious to see
how quick he put on magisterial airs; he was one of those who enjoy
authority, though little and brief.

"Accursed beast!" thought Garcia, who did not dare just now to break out
with his "pig, dog," etc. "He wants me to pay everything. The thousand
ought to be enough for men and horses and all. Why not poison the girl at
once, and save all this money? If he had the spirit of a man! O Madre de
Dios! Madre de Dios! What extremities! what extremities!"

But Garcia was like a good many of us; his thoughts were worse than his
deeds and words. While he was cogitating thus savagely, he was saying
aloud, "My son, my dear Carlos, come and choose for yourself."

Turning into the court of the house, they strolled through a medley of
wagons, mules, horses, merchandise, muleteers, teamsters, idlers, white
men and Indians. Coronado soon picked out a couple of rancheros whom he
knew as capital riders, fair marksmen, faithful and intelligent. Next his
eye fell upon a man in Mexican clothing, almost as dark and dirty too as
the ordinary Mexican, but whose height, size, insolence of carriage, and
ferocity of expression marked him as of another and more pugnacious, more
imperial race.

"You are an American," said Coronado, in his civil manner, for he had two
manners as opposite as the poles.