(SANDY returns slowly to table, pours out glass of liquor, nods to
DON JOSE, and drinks.) I looks towards ye, ole man. Adios!

[Exit SANDY.

Don Jose. His coolness is perfect. If these Americans are cayotes
in their advances, they are lions in retreat! Bueno! I begin to
respect him. But it will be just as well to set Concho to track
him to the Mission; and I will see that he leaves the rancho alone.

[Exit Jose.

Enter hurriedly JOVITA CASTRO, in riding habit, with whip.

So! Chiquita not yet saddled, and that spy Concho haunting the
plains for the last half-hour. What an air of mystery! Something
awful, something deliciously dreadful, has happened! Either my
amiable drunkard has forgotten to despatch Concho on his usual
fool's errand, or he is himself lying helpless in some ditch. Was
there ever a girl so persecuted? With a father wrapped in mystery,
a lover nameless and shrouded in the obscurity of some Olympian
height, and her only confidant and messenger a Bacchus instead of a
Mercury! Heigh ho! And in another hour Don Juan--he told me I
might call him John--will be waiting for me outside the convent
wall! What if Diego fails me? To go there alone would be madness!
Who else would be as charmingly unconscious and inattentive as this
American vagabond! (Goes to L.) Ah, my saddle and blanket hidden!
He HAS been interrupted. Some one has been watching. This freak
of my father's means something. And to-night, of all nights, the
night that Oakhurst was to disclose himself, and tell me all! What