Something else was done, which no one had expected to do when the four
galloped up to the trespassers. Jack and Dade dismounted and helped
Jerry unload the logs from the wagon, for one thing; while Teresita
inspected Mrs. Jerry's ingenious domestic makeshifts and managed
somehow, with Mrs. Jerry's help, to make the bond of mutual liking
serve very well in the place of intelligible speech. For another, the
don fairly committed himself to the promise of a peon or two to help
in the further devastation of the trees upon the Picardo mountain
slope behind the little, natural meadow, which Jerry Simpson had so
calmly appropriated to his own use.
"He is honest," Don Andres asserted more than once on the ride home,
perhaps in self-justification for his soft dealing. "He is honest;
and when he sees that the land is mine, he will pay; or if he does
not pay, he will go--and tilled acres and a cabin will not harm me.
Valencia, if he marries the daughter of Carlos (as the senora says
will come to pass), will be glad to have a cabin to live in apart from
the mother of his wife, who is a shrew and will be disquieting in any
man's household. Therefore, Senor Hunter, you may order the peons to
assist the big hombre and his beautiful senora, that they may soon
have a hut to shelter them from the rains. It is not good to see so
gentle a woman endure hardship within my boundary. Many tules, they
will need," he added after a minute, "and it is unlikely that the
Senor Seem'son understands the making of a thatch.
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