"I reckon my business can
wait. Hustle up, Dave." A few moments later, as they were saddling
their horses, he lamented: "What did I tell you? Here I go, on the
dodge from a dressmaker. I s'pose I've got to live like a road-
agent now, till something happens."
Don Ricardo Guzman was an American, but he spoke no English. An
accident of birth had made him a citizen of the United States--his
father having owned a ranch which lay north instead of south of
the Rio Grande. Inasmuch as the property had fallen to Ricardo,
his sons, too, were Yankees in the eyes of the law. But in all
other respects Don Ricardo and his family differed not at all from
the many Guzmans who lived across the border. The Guzman ranch
comprised a goodly number of acres, and, since live stock multiply
rapidly, its owner had in some sort prospered. On the bank of a
resaca---a former bed of the Rio Grande--stood the house, an adobe
structure, square, white, and unprotected from the sun by shrub or
tree. Behind it were some brush corrals and a few scattered mud
jacals, in which lived the help.
Ricardo had just risen from a siesta when his two visitors rode
up, and he made them welcome with the best he had.
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