“I believe not.” Grant spoke warily, his senses alert for some pitfall. He shot a warning glance at Benicia; but the girl, ignorant of the grim feud between the two, could not read it understandingly. Colonel Urgo surrounded his head with a blue cloud and continued: “An engaging history, señor. Not a house in all Sonora with such romance behind it, such--how do you say it?--such legend, eh? Though I am distantly of the same family, our branch cannot claim the distinction that falls to my cousin, who is the last of the veritable O’Donoju. “Behold her glorious head, Señor Hickman!” Urgo waved his cigarette to point the burning of sunlight above Benicia’s brow; his own head inclined as if in reverence. “There in my fairest cousin’s so-marvellous hair lies all the legend and the history of the great family O’Donoju.” The girl, frankly amused at what appeared a turgid compliment, tossed back her head in a gust of laughter. But Grant could not join with her. As from some iceberg veiled in fog came to him the cold feel of malignity moving to some unguessed purpose. Was Urgo planning to strike at him through the girl he adored? Yet what possible obloquy could he call up against Benicia, whose soul was unsullied as the winds of the wastes? Urgo spoke on: “Undoubtedly, my cousin, Señor Hickman has felt his heart snared by those burning meshes of yours or he is not a judge of beauty”--gesture of impatience from Benicia. “So it is for the benefit of the señor as well as for your own, fairest cousin, that I recite this legend of the red hair of the O’Donoju. Strange, is it not, that all Sonora knows it and has told the story to its children for a hundred years, yet you, _chiquita_”--a wave of the cigarette toward the girl--“who should be most interested are the only ignorant one. “There was in the long ago, señor, a Michael O’Donohue--what you call of the wild Irish, who had flaming hair and an untamed spirit. A king in Spain gave him the whole district of Altar for his estate, and he came here to the Garden of Solitude with his Spanish lady and built him this house where we sit. He was a man who considered the safety of his soul, so he built a mission to the glory of the four evangelists out yonder by the Gulf where the Sand People needed the comfort of the Mother Church and--” “He lived a life any one of his descendants might pattern after,” Benicia put in with a smile carrying a sting. Urgo touched his breast with delicate fingers and bowed. Then turning again to Grant: “When the Apaches burned that mission, señor, a pious O’Donoju restored it and the family, then numerous, endowed that mission altar with much gold and silver. There was, too, a great string of pearls--pearls with a green light, legend says, which the Sand People brought from the shell beds of the Gulf to show their piety. You are following me, Señor Hickman, eh?”