starting on our return trip. You saw, senor, how we arrived. Starved,
sore, and discouraged, we straggled home, jeered at and ridiculed by
wiseacres who are always ready to say, 'I told you so!' and by
enemies who had no liking for us. But the women, may Santa Barbara
keep them virtuous! they who loved their husbands truly rejoiced to
welcome us home, although we failed to bring them chispas de oro.

"As concerns the wife of Juan de Dios, and who was now his widow,
pobrecita, she was not to be found at her home. She had taken
advantage of her man's absence to decamp to the mountain of Manzana
with a strapping goat-herder, a very worthy young man, whom she loved
and is now happily free to marry."



CHAPTER VII. THE FIGHT IN THE SAND HILLS. THE PHANTOM DOG

A number of years had I lived with my relatives when uncle found it
expedient to sell out his business. He had prospered wonderfully in
his commercial ventures. Long since had his coffers absorbed most of
the money circulating within his sphere of trade. Thereafter he
accepted commercial paper in payment for merchandise, and trade grew
immensely. Our customers soon learned how easy it was to affix their
signatures to promissory notes and to mortgages on their lands or
cattle, their horses, sheep, crops, and chattels. Of course there was
a little interest to be paid on the indebtedness, but as it was
merely a trifling one and a half per centum per month or eighteen per
cent yearly, it was of no consequence. And it was so easy to pay your
debts. Just think of it, people bought everything they needed and
longed for at the store and paid for it by simply signing their names