She had promised it to Tony, the girl said--and the next. "Tony can't close-herd you," laughed Rutherford. "His title ain't clear yet--won't be till the priest has said so. You'll dance the second one with me, Bonita." "We shall see, _senor_," she mocked. But the Mexican blood in the girl beat fast. In her soft, liquid eyes lurked the hunger for sex adventure. And this man was a prince of the blood--the son of Clint Wadley, the biggest cattleman in West Texas. There were challenging stars of deviltry in Bonita's eyes when they met those of Rutherford over the shoulder of Alviro while she danced, but the color was beating warm through her dark skin. The lift of her round, brown throat to an indifferent tilt of the chin was mere pretense. The languorous passion of the South was her inheritance, and excitement mounted in her while she kept time to the melodious dance. Alviro was master of ceremonies, and Wadley found his chance while the young Mexican was of necessity away from Bonita. Rutherford bowed to her with elaborate mockery. "Come. Let us walk in the moonlight, sweetheart," he said. Bonita turned to him with slow grace. The eyes of the man and the woman met and fought. In hers there was a kind of savage fierceness, in his an insolent confidence. "No," she answered. "Ah! You're afraid of me--afraid to trust yourself with me," he boasted. She was an untutored child of the desert, and his words were a spur to her quick pride. She rose at once, her bosom rising and falling fast. She would never confess that--never. The girl walked beside him with the fluent grace of youth, beautiful as a forest fawn. In ten years she would be fat and slovenly like her Mexican mother, but now she carried her slender body as a queen is supposed to but does not. Her heel sank into a little patch of mud where some one had watered a horse. Under the cottonwoods she pulled up her skirt a trifle and made a _moue_ of disgust at the soiled slipper. "See what you've done!" Small, even teeth, gleamed in a coquettish smile from the ripe lips of the little mouth. He understood that he was being invited to kneel and clean the mud-stained shoe. "If you're looking for a doormat to wipe your feet on, I'll send for Tony," he jeered. The father of Bonita was Anglo-Saxon. She flashed anger at his presumption. "Don't you think it. Tony will never be a doormat to anybody. Be warned, _senor_, and do not try to take what is his." Again their eyes battled. Neither of them saw a man who had come out from the house and was watching them from the end of the porch. "I take what the gods give, my dear, and ask leave of no man," bragged Wadley. "Or woman?" "Ah! That is different. When the woman is Bonita, _muchacha_, I am her slave." He dropped to one knee and with his handkerchief wiped the mud from the heel of her slipper. For a moment his fingers touched lightly the trim little ankle; then he rose quickly and caught her in his arms.