"Look you, Valencia!
Since you are travelling, you had best go and tell the padres to make
ready the sacrament for your gringo friend, that blue-eyed one; for
truly his time on earth is short!"
Valencia, at that, looked up into Manuel's face and smiled in spite of
the pain in his feet and the emptiness in his stomach.
"Does it please you, then, Valencia? All night I rode to bear a message
to that blue-eyed one who thinks himself supremo in all things; a
challenge from Don Jose, to fight a duelo if he is not a coward; so did
Jose write. 'Unless you are afraid to meet me'--and the vanity of that
blue-eyed one is great, Valencia. Of a truth, the man is loco. What
think you, Valencia? He had the right to choose the weapons--and Jose
believed that he would choose those pistols of which you make so much
talk. Madre de Dios! What says the blue-eyed one, then?--and laughed in
my face while he spoke the words! 'Go tell Don Jose I will fight him
whenever and wherever he likes; and for weapons I choose riatas.' Heard
you anything--"
"Riatas!" Valencia's jaw dropped an inch before he remembered that
Manuel's eyes were sharp and eager to read the thoughts of a man in the
twitching muscles of his face.
"Si, riatas!" Manuel's whole fat body shook with laughter. "Even you,
who are wholly bewitched by those gringos, even you are dismayed! Tell
me, Valencia, have you seen him lasso anything?"
But Valencia, having pulled himself together, merely lifted his
shoulders and smiled wisely, so that even Manuel was almost deceived
into believing that Valencia's faith was great because it was built upon
a secret knowledge of what the blue-eyed one could do.
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