"Not bad, eh?" Hard stopped beside her, thinking how her splendid youth and vibrant coloring harmonized with the surroundings. "Not bad at all," laughed the girl. "You only need a few wild looking Mexicans prowling about to give a touch of life." Hard pointed toward the mine. Some dark-skinned men wearing big straw sombreros were running a hand car up the track while another group lounged in a doorway. "There are your Mexicans, but I'm afraid they're too lazy to be very wild. Nothing but a revolution excites them these days and sometimes I think they're getting a bit blase over them. Now and then they wake up over a cock-fight." They walked down the street toward the boarding-house. "I wish, Mr. Hard, that you would tell me something about the young man who drove me over last night," the girl said. "Who? Scotty?" "No," a little indignantly. "I mean Senor Pachuca. Oh, I forgot that I hadn't told you!" "Scott told me. He and I thought, if you don't mind, that we wouldn't say anything about it before the others. I mean about his being in the neighborhood." "I won't if you don't want me to," replied Polly, with unusual docility. "But please tell me about him. Mr. Scott didn't seem to want to." "Well, no, Scotty didn't want to frighten you, I suppose." "Frighten me? As if I was that kind of girl!" "It's just a little difficult these days to know what one may or may not tell a young lady," smiled Hard. "But about Johnny Pachuca. A good many people call him 'Don Juan'--I don't know whether it's because he claims to be of pure Spanish blood, or whether it's a subtle recognition of his popularity with the ladies." "Oh!" "A few years ago, he was a captain or a colonel or something equally fancy in the army. He's a dashing young scamp, and he had the good luck or the bad luck whatever you want to call it to engage the affections of a good-looking young actress who was supposed to be bestowing those affections on a man higher up. Naturally, the man higher up looked about for a way of getting even. He dug up a scandal about some army funds. Young Pachuca had been doing what seems to have been the usual thing down in Mexico City--padding his accounts--so they got him. "Not that they couldn't have got anybody on the staff on the same charge; but they were after Juan. Juan had to choose between retiring to private life or turning bandit. Having a taste for action, he did the latter." "Do you mean like Villa?"