She shouted the last words and disappeared up the narrow, crooked
street, just as a fragment of rock whizzed over my shoulder. I jumped on
my pony to dash away, when another rock just missed my head, and I saw
the boy, Marcos, beside the church, ready for a third hurl. His black
eyes flashed fire, and the grin of malice on his face showed all his
fine white teeth.

I was as mad as a boy can be. Instead of fleeing, I spurred my pony
straight at him.

"You little beast, I dare you to throw that rock at me! I dare you!" I
cried.

The boy dropped the missile and sped away after the girl. I followed in
time to see them enter a doorway, six or seven houses up the way. Then I
turned back, and in a minute I had overtaken our wagons trailing down to
the ford of the Santa Fé River.

"I thought mebby you'd gone back after Jondo and that holy podder," Rex
Krane greeted me. "Better begin to wink naturally and look a little
pleasanter now. We'll be in the Plazzer in two or three minutes."

The drivers flourished their whips, the mules caught their spirit, and
with bump and lurch and rattle we swung down the narrow crack between
adobe walls that ended before the old Exchange Hotel at the corner of
the Plaza.

This open square in the center of the city was shaded by trees and
littered with refuse. The Palace of the Governors fronted it along the
entire north side, a long, low, one-story structure whose massive adobe