Urgo stiffly bowed and waited for the gringo to speak. Instead of returning his salutation the white man searched the pockets of his vest for tobacco bag and papers and bent all his attention upon rolling a cigarette. “You have come from the Casa O’Donoju, señor?” Urgo asked in English. Bim Bagley gave the clipped Spanish “Si” of assent and drew his rolled cigarette across his lips with a languid air. Urgo in a growing rage wondered if this boorishness were the stranger’s typically American manner or assumed to provoke hostility. His voice was silken as he put his next question in Spanish: “The Señorita O’Donoju and Don Padraic, her father, they enjoy the best health, I hope.” “I hope so, too,” was Bim’s short reply as he put a match to his smoke. Urgo’s brows knitted. Here was no boor but a wise gringo with a chuckle behind every word. “I am doing myself the honour to call upon Don Padraic and his charming daughter,” his temper pushed him to volunteer. Bim swept the company of horsemen with a lack-lustre eye and then let his glance return to the dapper figure of the Colonel. “Do tell,” he drawled in broadest Border dialect. “See you brought all the boys with you. Well, so long!” He nudged the Indian a signal to go ahead. Urgo would have liked to detain this impudent gringo for a lesson in manners did not more pressing pleasure lie ahead. He gave an imperceptible nod and the horsemen who blocked the road moved aside. The little car shot back a pungent cloud of smoke for a parting insult as it took the road in high. Urgo watched it rise to the low crest of a divide and disappear. Insufferable gringo! What had he been doing at Casa O’Donoju? What did he know of recent events there? A shrug dismissed Bagley, and the file of horsemen resumed leisurely progress along the desert road. A night’s dry camp, and early morning would see them in the oasis green at journey’s end. Colonel Urgo miscalculated when he dismissed Bim Bagley with a shrug. Did the little Spaniard but know it, this meeting in the wastes was the objective point in the gringo’s strategy. Even under certain heavy handicaps ten gallons of gasoline in the desert can achieve more than ten horses with rurales on their backs. It all depends upon the hand that nurses precious jets of this gasoline across the path of the spark. And Quelele’s was a master hand. Wherefore the second phase in Bim’s strategy was entered upon.