So there was a gray-eyed white man in Bismo, Arizona, with a black-eyed boy in his cabin. No problem about it at all, from the standpoint of the other miners, just scorn--only Bob Leadley had been known from away back as cool and gamy as they made them; nothing like the squaw-man, cholo-man type. The miners couldn’t give much play to their contempt before those pleasant gray eyes of Bob’s, which might inquire their meaning, and look into it. Men weren’t mind-readers in Bismo. They saw the steady eyes, the whimsical smile, but no one knew what was going on; not even Mort Cotton, who had punched cattle, skinned mules, and washed for gold with Bob Leadley for ten years; not even the Mexican woman and her daughter who brought Bart up. But it was all a matter of how you gave advice. Bismo found out gradually that Bob wasn’t set up very high in his idea of being a successful parent. They found he listened attentively to comment given within a certain range of tones; discovering this, the miners supplied it plentifully. The social barrier in Bismo was the river itself. Mexican laborers worked, two to one to the white men, in the placers, but the two settlements rarely mixed outside working hours, except when waves of drink inundated the white miners. Then they would move over to Dobe-town to drink and ‘eat different,’ the calls ending in a row, not infrequently in the death of a ‘greaser.’ Letchie Welton, the town marshal, wasn’t even to be approached on a matter like this, and sounds of mourning from one or more dobe huts seldom reached as far as the ‘Damask Cheek,’ any more than the strumming of guitars.... * * * * * Several times in the next dozen years, Bob Leadley and Mort Cotton were on the point of leaving Bismo, but the Rio Brava had a way of suddenly picking up, the gold eke rising to quite a little color. There was another thing; it was hard for Bob to make up his mind to take Bart away from the Mexican woman and her daughter. It didn’t seem fair. The old señora had been a friend of Bart’s mother and loved the white man’s boy; also her daughter loved him. But Bart was growing up more Mexican than white; talked Spanish in preference to English; was more often seen across the stream than on this side, and running with the Mexican boys, one Palto especially, than with the four or five white boys of his age in town. Bart’s whole business was horses, but Mexican words having to do with them were too easy on his tongue--hondos, latigos, reatas, conchos, yakimas. A slim, black-haired youth, slow to rouse, not cruel or a fool; an easy way with him; not stirred in the least by the thought of washing gold; no idea of working hours, as being superior to all others.