Alaire nodded. "You have made me understand how you look at things, and I must confess that I tolerate actions that would have shocked me before I came to know this country. Panfilo is dead and gone--rightly or wrongly, I don't know. What I dread now is further consequences." "Don't weaken on my account." "No! I'm not thinking of the consequences to you or to me. You are the kind of man who can protect himself, I'm sure; your very ability in that direction frightens me a little on Jose's account. But"--she sighed and lifted her round shoulders in a shrug--"perhaps time will decide this question for us." Dave laughed with some relief. "I think you've worried yourself enough over it, ma'am," he said; "splitting hairs as to what's right and what's wrong, when it doesn't matter much, in either case. Suppose you continue to think it over at your leisure." "Perhaps I'd better. And now"--Alaire extended her hand--"won't you and Montrosa come to see me once in a while? I'm very lonesome." "We'd love to," Dave declared. He had it on his lips to say more, but at that moment an eager whinny and an impatient rattle of a bridle-bit came from the driveway, and he smiled. "There's her acceptance now." "Oh no! She merely heard your voice, the fickle creature." Alaire watched her guest until he had disappeared into the shadows, then she heard him talking to the mare. Benito's words at the rodeo recurred to her, and she wondered if this Ranger might not also have a way with women. The house was very still and empty when she re-entered it. XVII THE GUZMAN INCIDENT Ricardo Guzman did not return from Romero. When two days had passed with no word from him, his sons became alarmed and started an investigation, but without the slightest result. Even Colonel Blanco himself could not hazard a guess as to Guzman's fate; the man had disappeared, it seemed, completely and mysteriously. Meanwhile, from other quarters of the Mexican town came rumors that set the border afire. Readers of this story may remember the famous "Guzman incident," so called, and the complications that resulted from it, for at the time it raised a storm of indignation as the crowning atrocity of the Mexican revolution, serving further to disturb the troubled waters of diplomacy and threatening for a moment to upset the precariously balanced relations of the two countries. At first the facts appeared plain: a citizen of the United States had been lured across the border and done to death by Mexican soldiers--for it soon became evident that Ricardo was dead. The outrage was a casus belli such as no self-respecting people could ignore; so ran the popular verdict. Then when that ominous mailed serpent which lay coiled along the Rio Grande stirred itself, warlike Americans prepared themselves to hear of big events.