I am tolerably bashful; but at the sight of this tempting partner, I could hold in no longer, and bending towards her, I said in my best Spanish, "Do me the favour, miss, to waltz with me." The wicked little manola first held down her head and blushed; then, raising the long fringes of her eyes, looked up again, and wits a voice as sweet as that of a canary-bird, replied-- "Con gusto, senor." (With pleasure, sir.) "Nos vamos!" cried I, elated with my triumph; and pairing off with my brilliant partner, we were soon whirling about in the mazy. We returned to our seats again, and after refreshing with a glass of Albuquerque, a sponge-cake, and a husk cigarette, again took the floor. This pleasurable programme we repeated some half-dozen times, only varying the dance from waltz to polka, for my manola danced the polka as if she had been a born Bohemian. On one of my fingers was a fifty-dollar diamond, which my partner seemed to think was _muy buenito_. As her igneous eyes softened my heart, and the champagne was producing a similar effect upon my head, I began to speculate on the propriety of transferring the diamond from the smallest of my fingers to the largest of hers, which it would, no doubt, have fitted exactly. All at once I became conscious of being under the surveillance of a large and very fierce-looking lepero, a regular pelado, who followed us with his eyes, and sometimes _in persona_, to every part of the room. The expression of his swarth face was a mixture of jealousy and vengeance, which my partner noticed, but, as I thought, took no pains to soften down. "Who is he?" I whispered, as the man swung past us in his chequered serape. "Esta mi marido, senor," (It is my husband, sir), was the cool reply. I pushed the ring close up to the root of my finger, shutting my hand upon it tight as a vice. "Vamos a tomar otra copita!" (Let us take another glass of wine!) said I, resolving to bid my pretty poblana, as soon as possible, a good-night. The Taos whisky had by this time produced its effect upon the dancers. The trappers and teamsters had become noisy and riotous. The leperos, who now half-filled the room, stimulated by wine, jealousy, old hatreds, and the dance, began to look more savage and sulky. The fringed hunting-shirts and brown homespun frocks found favour with the dark-eyed majas of Mexico, partly out of a respect for, and a fear of, courage, which is often at the bottom of a love like theirs. Although the trading caravans supplied almost all the commerce of Santa Fe, and it was clearly the interest of its inhabitants to be on good terms with the traders, the two races, Anglo-American and Hispano-Indian, hated each other thoroughly; and that hate was now displaying itself on one side in bullying contempt, on the other in muttered _carrajos_ and fierce looks of vengeance.