"What's the matter?" said Clarence, from the gateway.

The men fell apart, glancing at each other. One said quickly in
Spanish:--

"Say nothing to HIM. It is an affair of the house."

But this brought Clarence down like a bombshell among them, not to be
overlooked in his equal command of their tongue and of them. "Ah! come,
now. What drunken piggishness is this? Speak!"

"The padron has been--perhaps--thrown," stammered the first speaker.
"His horse arrives,--but he does not. We go to inform the senora."

"No, you don't! mules and imbeciles! Do you want to frighten her to
death? Mount, every one of you, and follow me!"

The men hesitated, but for only a moment. Clarence had a fine assortment
of Spanish epithets, expletives, and objurgations, gathered in his rodeo
experience at El Refugio, and laid them about him with such fervor
and discrimination that two or three mules, presumably with guilty
consciences, mistaking their direction, actually cowered against the
stockade of the corral in fear. In another moment the vacqueros had
hastily mounted, and, with Clarence at their head, were dashing down the
road towards Santa Inez. Here he spread them in open order in the grain,
on either side of the track, himself taking the road.

They did not proceed very far. For when they had reached the gradual
slope which marked the decline to the second terrace, Clarence, obeying