"José, she heard on town. The patron, she's worry leetle. She's 'fraid for Señor Hunter be keel. Me, I ride to find for-sure." Valencia dropped his match, and leaned negligently from the saddle and picked it out of the grass, his eyes stealing a look at the stranger as he came up. "Good work," commented Jack under his breath to Dade. But Valencia's ears were keen for praise; he heard, and from that moment he was Jack's friend. "I borrowed your saddle, Valencia," Jack announced, meaning to promise a speedy return of it. "Not my saddle; yours and mine, amigo," amended Valencia quite simply and sincerely. "Mine, she's yours also. You keep him." While he smoked the little, corn-husk cigarette, he eyed with admiration the copper-red hair upon which Manuel had looked with disfavor. Before they rode on and left him, his friendliness had stamped an agreeable impression upon Jack's consciousness. He looked back approvingly at the sombreroed head bobbing along behind a clump of young manzanita just making ready to bloom daintily. "I like that vaquero," he stated emphatically. "He's worth two of Manuel, to my notion." "Valencia? He's not half the man old Manuel is. He gambles worse than an Injun, and never has anything more than his riding outfit and the clothes on his back, they tell me. And he fights like a catamount when the notion strikes him; and it doesn't seem to make much difference whether he's got an excuse or not. He's a good deal like you, in that respect," he added, with that perfect frankness which true friendship affects as a special privilege earned by its loyalty. "Manuel's got tricky eyes," countered Jack. "He's the kind of Spaniard that will 'Sí, Señor,' while he's hitching his knife loose to get you in the back. I know the breed; I lived amongst 'em before I ever saw you. Valencia's the kind I'd tie to." "And I was working with 'em when you were saying 'pitty horsey!' My first job was with a Spanish outfit. A Mexican majordomo licked me into shape when I was sweet sixteen. And," he clinched the argument mercilessly, "I was sixteen and drawing a man's pay on rodeo when you wore your pants buttoned on to your waist!" "And you don't know anything yet!" Jack came back at him. Whereat they laughed and called a truce, which was the way of them. CHAPTER VII THE LORD OF THE VALLEY