The long sloping mesas were bright with
golden poppies; fleecy white clouds bedecked the azure of a western sky,
flushing now with carmine tints. Cowbells tinkled musically faint with
distance and from the vaquero quarters came a herder's song, a woman's
laughter, the tinkle of a guitar.
"What are you dreaming of, my friend?" asked Alice Windham, gently.
"It is very like a dream," he smiled at her, "this place of yours. So
near the city. Yet so far removed in its enchantment....
"Down there," he pointed toward the town, where lights were springing up
out of the dusk, "a man lies dying ... and a mob plots vengeance."
"Oh, come," Benito voiced a protest, "we're not a mob, Dave. You know
that." He laid a hand upon the other's arm. "I understand how hard it's
been for you.... You're suffering for the sins of underlings unfit to
lace your boots."
"Against whom you warned me not long since," said Broderick to Alice.
"Casey, Mulligan. Yes, I remember ... you resented it a little, didn't
you?"
"No," he said, his eyes upon her with that eager look, repressed and
yearning, which she could not always meet. "No, dear lady; it was not
resentment.... But it hurt.
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