Jack, leaning against a convenient tree in the next row, smoked a
cigarette and watched their slow, toilsome progress. Killing work it
was, but the next trip would be easier after that rendering of the stiff
tissue. When the stick touched the hondo, the two stopped and panted for
a minute; then Diego grasped his end of the stick and signaled the
return trip. Again it took practically every ounce of strength they had
in their muscular bodies, but they could move steadily now, instead of
in straining, spasmodic jerks. The rawhide sizzled where it curled
around the stick. They reached the end and stopped, and Jack commanded
them to sit down and have a smoke before they did more.
"It is nothing, Senor. We can continue, since the senor has need of
haste," panted Diego, brushing from his eyes the sweat that dripped from
his eyebrows.
"Not such haste that you need to kill yourselves at it," grinned Jack,
and went to examine the riata. Those two trips had accomplished much
towards making it a pliable, live thing in the hands of one skilled to
direct its snaky dartings here and there, wherever one willed it to go.
Many trips it would require before the riata was perfect, and then--
"The senor is early at his prayers," observed a soft, mocking voice
behind him.
Jack dropped the riata and turned, his whole face smiling a welcome. But
Teresita was in one of her perverse moods and the mockery was not all in
her voice; her eyes were maddeningly full of it as she looked from him
to the stretched riata.
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