The Gringos: A Story Of The Old California Days In 1849Bower, B. M.
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The Gringos: A Story Of The Old California Days In 1849
Bower, B. M.
California -- Fiction; Gold mines and mining -- Fiction; Western stories
If she had been on the ground, she would have stamped her foot. As it
was, she shook an adorably tiny fist at Jack, and blinked her long
lashes upon the tears of real, sincere anger that stood in her black
eyes, and gritted her teeth at him; for the señorita had a temper quite
as hot as Jack's, when it was roused, and all her life she had been
given her own way in everything.
"Let him go this moment, or I shall never speak to you again!" she
threatened rashly.
For answer, Jack walked deliberately past her to where Surry stood with
his feet braced still against the pull of the riata and his neck arched
knowingly, while he rolled the little wheel in the bit with his tongue.
Jack made himself a cigarette, lay down in the shade of his horse, and
smoked just as calmly as though his heart was not thumping so that he
could hear it quite plainly. She had gone the wrong way about making him
yield; threats had always acted like a goad upon Jack's anger, just as
they do upon most of us.
Teresita looked at him in silence for a minute. And Jack, his head upon
his arm in a position that would give him a fair view of her from the
brim of his sombrero while he seemed to be taking no notice of her,
wondered how soon she would change her mood to coaxing, and so melt that
lump of obstinacy in his throat that would not let him so much as answer
her vixenish upbraidings. A very little coaxing would have freed the
bull then, and he would have kissed the red mouth that had reviled him,
and would have called her "dulce corazon," as she loved to have him do.
Such a very little coaxing would have been enough!
"Dios! How I hate a gringo!" she cried passionately, just when Jack
believed she was going to cry "Señor Jack?" in that pretty, cooing tone
she had that could make the words as tender as a kiss. "José is right.
Gringos are savages and worse than savages. Stay and torture your bull,
then! I hate you! Never have I known hate, till now! I shall be glad
when José drags you from your horse to-morrow. I shall laugh and clap my
hands, and cry, 'Bravo, bravo, querido mio!' [my beloved] when you are
flung into the dirt where you belong. And when he kills you, I shall
kiss him for his reward, before all the people, and I shall laugh when
they fling you to the coyotes!" Yes, she said that; for she had a
temper--had the Señorita Teresita--and she had a tongue that could speak
words that burned like vitriol.
She said more than has been quoted; epithets she hurled upon the
recumbent form that seemed a man asleep save for the little drift of
smoke from his cigarette; epithets which she had heard the vaqueros use
at the corrals upon certain occasions when they did not know that she
was near; epithets of which she did not know the meaning at all.
"Bravo!" applauded some one, and she turned to see that Manuel and
Carlos, José's head vaquero, had ridden up to the group very quietly,
and had been listening for no one knew how long.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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