"'_Vamos!_' He shouts it with such anger that she stumbles and falls, running back to the house. Also she makes such a quick packing that she is driving her burro out to the trail before the Red Cabeza comes to his senses."
Billy's eyes, indeed, opened on the departing flash of her garments. "You didn't lose much time," he commented, with a quizzical glance upward. "Well, to the victor the spoils--or the rejection thereof. That was a peach of a punch--the bum left, too, wasn't it?" The old merry look flashing out again from the blood and bruises, he asked: "How'll you trade? In exchange for one admission from you I'm willing to grant you're right."
"Would you have been as careful of the proprieties if the señorita were out of the case?"
Smiling, Seyd raised doubtful shoulders. "_Quien sabe_, señor?"
"Ahem!" Billy coughed. "Now you justify the continuance of my wretched existence. All the same, while it may be correct in theory your darned morality is mighty uncomfortable practice. That girl could cook. The next time you fall in love please--"
Before his look of hopeless surprise Seyd's anger faded. "I beg your pardon. Of course you didn't know, but--I'm already married."
"Me." With grim sarcasm he added, "And you know that it is against the law of both God and man for a married man to fall in love."
Feeling dimly that something was expected of him, but debarred from congratulations by the other's irony, Billy floundered, bringing several attempts at speech to a lame conclusion. "When--when did it--happen?"
"Happen? That's it." Seyd jumped at the word. "It _happened_ in New Mexico three years ago when I was down there 'experting' the Calumet group. She was the daughter of a mine foreman, pretty and neat as a grouse in the fall, but of the hopelessly common type. I don't have to describe her. You've seen them, in pairs, swinging their skirts along the boardwalks of any small town, their eyes on every man and a burst of giggles always on tap. I should never have paid her any serious attention if several of her admirers hadn't done me the honor of getting jealous. Until one big lout warned me to leave her alone under penalty of broken bones it was never more than a mild flirtation, but after that I went deeper--so deep that it was soon impossible for me to withdraw. At least, I thought it was then, though I have since come to regard my marriage with her almost as a crime. You see, I thought it would break her heart, but in less than a week after the marriage I discovered that she was nothing but a bundle of small vanities bound up in a pretty skin, that she hadn't a thought above the money and position she expected to gain through me. And how she changed! As a girl she was soft, fluffy, and innocent as a kitten, but one by one her small vanities and frivolities developed into appetites and passions, and I awoke to the fact that she was altogether animal--a beautiful animal, prettier than ever in her young wifehood, but without the slightest capacity for intellectual or spiritual development.