The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1895-04-25

strangers 10 me. Inc man was Z
sinewy, good-looking, olive-colored
young fellow, with bold eyes and q
slight black down just appearing on
his lip. He wore the customary enor
nous high-crowned hat, the short en-
broidered leather jacket and the skin
tight pantaloons with broad stripes
running down them, into which the
youthful Mexican, when he desires to
look particularly spruce, manages by
some inscrutable process to insert his
limbs. The woman, or rather the girl,
for she could not have been more than
fourteen or fifteen years of age, was
riding in front of him. She was de.
Seidedly a pretty creature, and was
rather in state of deshabille com.
pared with the smart costume Of he1
companion.
Her thick, black hair was flying
loose about her face and shoulders and
a bright-colored cotton gown, but
toned in two or three places across hez
bosom, half revealed and half con
cealed that she was a woman in form
If she was but child in years. One
knee was crooked over the horn Of the
saddle and her scanty dress, drawn up
by her position, afforded US q liberal
view of pleasing foot and ankle,
quite innocent of the conventional
shoe and stocking.
The young fellow reined in his horse
in front of us, and, taking off his great
hat, said, politely, in the Spanish
tongue, after giving us the usual
greeting:
= ''Senores, do you wish to do US the
favor of giving the sonora little OF
water to drink?''
Edgeworth handed the young woman
q dipperful of water from our jar that
stood in the shade of the porch and
she drank it off seemin ely quite un-
abashed at the simplicity of her attire.
The youth declined any water, saying
that they were in great haste and,
with ''muchas gracias, adios, senores,"
dro1 spurs into his jaded pony and
went off to the south as fast as he had
come.
Billings took his pipe from his
mouth and watched the couple vanish
in the dust and mesquite brush.
. "I'll bet," he said, "that's runaway
match"
This seemed plausible hypothesis,
and we fell to wondering where they
hailed from. Edgeworth, who knew
the country better than any of US,
said he had never seen the man be-
fore.
'But that girls face" he added,
''somehow seems familiar to Inc. Let
me see," he continued, reflectively, adj
dressing his query to nobody in par
ticular, doesn't she belong to old Don
Mauricio's hacienda, up there the
other side of the arroyo San Juan? If
she is daughter of the old don him
self, am not surprised at the hurry
that the chap seems to be in"
/ ecollected Don Mauricio. His
place was twenty miles up tho river.
He was a; wealthy old fellow, as Next
cans go, owned a large tract of land
and doclss and herds, and ruled over
his medieros and pastures in true
patriarchal fashion. We had paid
him visit the year previous on some
stock business, but had no recollec-
tion of seeing this glrl at that time.
Edgeworth's memory or his power of
observation was better.
While we were talking about our Wis
itors, we had brought the horses from
the corral and saddled up. Young
Hensley decided to go with US, and we
left Billings behind Ito hold down the
ranch," in frontier phrase, until our
The road we took was the
same by which the runaways had gone.
We had presently forgot the romantic
of the morning .and had
drifted into the usual staple of stock
mems talk-the drought, the low price
of beef cattle and the exorbitant rail
way charges, and, warming with the
theme, we're pronouncing a
general anathema upon the big buy
ers, when we heard the sounds Of fast
ridden horses behind us. The tramp
ing of our own animals and the loud
chatting of our leather leggings against
the saddles had prevented us from
hearing the approach of the riders be-
hind us until they were close upon us,
and as we turned in our saddles to see
who they were Edgeworth had hardly
time to 'exclaim: Don Mauricio, as r
live" before they had over taken us.
There were two of them. One was
evidently shepherd or vaquero of the
ordinary type; the other, as Edge
worth had guessed, was the old Don
himself.
He was not a reassuring spectacle.
He must have been a very powerful
man in his prime, as his broad shout
aers and great, square head, with its
strongly marked features, indicated.
His face had been turned by the
sixty years of Texas suns to the COM
plexion of negro, the effect of which
was heightened by contrast with a
bushy white beard and long white
hair that hung down beneath his
broad hat His eyes, which were
bloodshot from passion or mescal,
were small and deeply set in his head.
and their sinister appearance was in
creased by enormous projecting eye
brows, as white as his beard. Both he
md his COMPANION wore belts with
pistols in them and had Winchester
rifles slung in leather cases from their