But if the young Spanish girl found a little current of pleasure in her surprise, Bucky and his friend were aware of the same sensation. All the charm of her race seemed summed up in Carmencita Megales. She was of blue blood, every feature and motion told that. The fine, easy set of her head, the fire in the dark, heavy-lashed eyes, the sweep of dusky chin and cheek and throat certified the same story. She had, too, that coquettish hint of uncertainty, that charm of mystery so fatal in its lure to questing man. Even physically the contradiction of sex attracted. Slender and lissom as a fawn, she was yet a creature of exquisitely rounded curves. Were her eyes brown or black or—in the sunlight—touched with a gleam of copper? There was always uncertainty. But much more was there fire, a quality that seemed to flash out from her inner self. She was a child of whims, a victim of her moods. Yet in her, too, was a passionate loyalty that made fickleness impossible. She knew how to love and how to hate, and, despite her impulses, was capable of surrender complete and irrevocable. All of this Bucky did not read in that first moment of meeting, but the shrewd judgment behind the level blue eyes came to an appraisal roughly just. Before she had spoken three sentences he knew she had all her sex’s reputed capacity for injustice as well as its characteristic flashes of generosity. “Are you one of the men who have rebelled against my father and attempted to murder him?” she flashed. “I’m the man he condemned to be hanged tomorrow morning at dawn for helping Juan Valdez take the guns,” retorted Bucky, with a laugh. “You are his enemy, and, therefore, mine.” “I’m a friend of Michael O’Halloran, who stood between him and the mob that wanted to kill him.” “Who first plotted against him and seduced his officers to betray him,” she quickly replied. “I reckon, ma’am, we better agree to disagree on politics,” said Bucky good-naturedly. “We’re sure liable to see things different from each other. Castile and Arizona don’t look at things with the same eyes.” She looked at him just then with very beautiful and scornful ones, at any rate. “I should hope not.” “You see, we’re living in the twentieth century up in the sunburned State,” said Bucky, with smiling aplomb. “Indeed! And we poor Chihuahuans?” “When I see the ladies I think you’re ce’tainly in the golden age, but when I break into your politics, I’m some reminded of that Richard Third fellow in the Shakespeare play.” “Referring, I presume, to my father?” she demanded haughtily. “In a general way, but eliminating the most objectionable points of the king fellow.” “You’re very kind.” She interrupted her scorn to ask him where he meant her to sleep. He glanced over the room. “This might do right here, if we had that bed aired.” “Do you expect to put me in irons?”