Tubacca had slumbered apathetically before; now the town was wide awake. In a couple of days the wagon train would head on north to Tucson, but now the activity in the plaza was a mixture of market day and fiesta. Small traders from Sonora took advantage of the protection afforded by _Don_ Cazar's outriders and had trailed along with their own products, now being spread out and hawked.
Parrots shrieked from homemade cages; brightly woven fabrics were draped to catch the eye. As he wandered about viewing cactus syrup, sweet, brown panocha-candy, fruit, dried meat, blankets, saddles, Drew was again aware of the almost strident color of this country. He fingered appreciatively a horn goblet carved with intricate figures of gods his Anglo eyes did not recognize. The hum of voices, the bray of mules, the baa-ing and naa-ing of sheep and goats, kept up a roar to equal surf on a seacoast. Afternoon was fast fading into evening, but Tubacca, aroused from the post-noon siesta, was in tumult.
A fighting cock tethered to a cart wheel stretched its neck to the utmost in an attempt to peck at Drew's spurs. He laughed, attracted, wrenched out of his own private world. The smell of spicy foods, of fruit, of animals and people ... the clamor ... the sights....
Drew rounded one end of a wagon and stepped abruptly into yet another world and time. All the stories which had been dinned warningly into his ears since he had left the Mississippi now brought his hand to one of the Colts at his belt. Most of the half-dozen men squatting on their heels about a fire were three-quarters bare, showing dusty, brown bodies. Two had dirty calico shirts loose above hide breech-clouts. Dark-brown eyes, as unreadable as Johnny Shannon's, surveyed Drew, but none of the Indians moved or spoke.
Common sense took over, and Drew's hand dropped from the gun butt. Hostiles would not be camping peacefully here in the heart of town. He could not be facing wild Apaches or Navajos. But they were the first Indians he had seen this close since he had ridden out of Texas.
Drew's war-trained muscles took over. He was in a half crouch, the Colt flipped over and out, pointing into the shadows where the newcomer emerged. Then the Kentuckian flushed and slammed his weapon back into the holster. This was the buckskinned man who had whooped the train into town that morning.