"
Rozales was not inclined to take his chief's view of Byrne's
value to them. He argued that the man was guilty of disloyalty
and therefore a menace. What he thought, but did not advance
as an argument, was of a different nature. Rozales was
filled with rage to think that the newcomer had outwitted him,
and beaten him at his own game, and he was jealous, too, of
the man's ascendancy in the esteem of Pesita; but he hid his
personal feelings beneath a cloak of seeming acquiescence in
his chief's views, knowing that some day his time would come
when he might rid himself of the danger of this obnoxious
rival.
"And tomorrow," continued Pesita, "I am sending him to
Cuivaca. Villa has considerable funds in bank there, and this
stranger can learn what I want to know about the size of the
detachment holding the town, and the habits of the garrison."
CHAPTER IX
BARBARA IN MEXICO
THE manager of El Orobo Rancho was an American named
Grayson. He was a tall, wiry man whose education had been
acquired principally in the cow camps of Texas, where, among
other things one does NOT learn to love nor trust a greaser. As
a result of this early training Grayson was peculiarly unfitted
in some respects to manage an American ranch in Mexico; but
he was a just man, and so if his vaqueros did not love him,
they at least respected him, and everyone who was or possessed
the latent characteristics of a wrongdoer feared him.
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