kind, and bade me write to you that you might trust him to find you
something to do if you should decide to come here. Have no fear; there
are not enough men at San Buenaventura to prevent a single man from
having all the work he may wish. Make haste and come. Do not delay.
Diego." The reader finished the letter, and there was a silence of some
minutes between the two, reader and listener. The former, a young man,
not much more than twenty-five years of age, had a moody expression on
his dark face. After reading the letter he waited for his companion to
speak. But Maria, his wife, appeared not to notice this and remained
silent. The two were sitting on the porch of a little adobe house on the
outskirts of the presidio town of Tubac, Mexico, a few, miles from the
coast of the Gulf of California. This had been the home of Benito's
parents, and since their death three years before, that of himself and
his wife. For a time they had been happy in their hard-working life, for
love lightened their toil; but toward the close of the second year in
their home they had suffered a series of reverses that sadly crippled
Benito's resources. First there had been a season of such heat and
drought that all their labor in the dozen acres which Benito cultivated
came to naught, and they gathered hardly more than enough to keep them
from starving before the next year's harvest. Then one of Benito's
horses, of which he had three, and fine ones they were, had been taken
sick and died just at the time when it was most needed, during the early
summer plowing - both Benito's and his neighbors'; for after the work on
his own land was done, Benito worked for others, thus adding something
toward their income. The death of his horse was a severe blow to him,
not only because he loved his horses, but because his income was greatly
curtailed in consequence. With three horses Benito could use a pair
every day, and yet allow each horse to rest one day out of three; but
with two, it could be done only by losing a day's work out of every
three; and this was the plan Benito had followed, for he could not bring