Murguia sank to the chin in his black coat. Glancing apprehensively at the cavalryman's long arm, he edged away to the farther side of the doorway. Experience had accustomed the ancient trader to despots, but in this cheery youngster of a Gringo the regal title was not clear, which simply made tyranny the more irksome. The Gringo was the veriest usurper. He did not justify his sway by the least ferocity. He never uttered a threat. Where, then, was his right to the sceptre he wielded so nonchalantly? Were there only some tangible jeopardy to his pelt, Murguia would have been more resigned. But his latest autocrat was only matter-of-fact, blithely and aggravatingly matter-of-fact. By every rule governing man's attitude toward man, the Senor Don should have been the bully, and the youngster the cringing sycophant. For since their very odd meeting two weeks before, the tyrant had been in the power of the tyrannized. It began on Murguia's own boat, where Murguia was absolute. Any time after leaving Mobile he had merely to follow his inclinations and order the fellow thrown overboard. Yet it was the soldier boy who had assumed the ascendancy, and it could not have been more natural were the boat's owner a scullion and the intruder an admiral. "And why _don't_ we start to-night?" the complacent usurper demanded in that plaintive drawl which so irritated the other. "You went for your passports, didn't you get 'em?" "Si--si, senor." "Good! Then to-night it is, eh?--Can't you speak out, _my_ gracious!" "_You_ might go to-night," the trader suggested timidly. "Alone?--N-o, parting isn't the sweet sorrow it's cracked up to be. Besides, I don't know the roads, but of course that's nothing to losing a jovial old mate like you, Murgie." Don Anastasio smirked at the pleasantry. "But _I_ can't go to-night, senor. I--I have to see--someone--first." The trooper betrayed the least impatience. "Now look here--usurer, viper, blanketed thief, honorable sir, you _know_ I'm in a hurry!" That his haste could be any concern of Murguia's was preposterous, and Murguia would have liked nothing better than to tell him so. But he did not, and suffered inwardly because somehow he could not. He harbored a dim but dreadful picture of what might happen should the amiable cavalryman actually lose his temper. Loss of patience had menace enough, though the Southerner had not stirred from his lazy posture in the doorway nor overlooked a single contented puff from the Missouri meerschaum. "I'm sorry," Don Anastasio paid out the hard-found words through his teeth, "but possibly we can leave to-morrow. Will, will that suit Your Mercy, Senor Coronel?" "Oh perhaps. Anyhow, don't go to forgetting, now, that I'm in a hurry." Don Anastasio breathed easier, and he even grew so bold as to recall a certain suspicion he had entertained. "Your errand down here must be of considerable importance, Senor Coronel?" he ventured.