"Ah, the riata! Last night I greased it well, Senor, so that to-day it
would be soft. And this morning at daybreak I stretched it here in the
stall and rubbed it until it shone. Now it is here, Senor, where no
knife-point can steal into it and cunningly cut the strands that are
hidden, so that the senor would not observe and would place faith upon
it and be betrayed." Diego lifted his loose, linen shirt and disclosed
the riata coiled about his middle.
The eyes of his god, when they rested upon the brown body wrapped round
and round with the rawhide on which his life would later hang, were
softer than they had been since he had craved the kiss that had been
denied him, many hours before. It was only the blind worship and the
loyalty of a peon whose feet were bare, whose hands were calloused with
labor, whose face was seamed with the harshness of his serfdom. Only a
peon's loyalty; but something hard and bitter and reckless, something
that might have proved a more serious handicap than a strange riata,
dropped away from Jack's mood and left him very nearly his normal self.
It was as if the warmth of the rawhide struck through the chill which
Teresita's unreasoning spite had brought to the heart of him, and left
there a little glow.
"Gracias, Diego," he said, and smiled in the way that made one love him.
"Let it stay until I have need of it. It will surely fly true, to-day,
since it has been warmed thus by thy friendship.
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