It was the Indian mother who decided the issue and made him draw his jib, ease his mainsheet, and begin to reach in-shore the quicker to pick up the oncoming boat. When he made out the rifles carried by the Solanos and the Morgans, almost he put up his helm to run for it and leave them. When he made out a woman in the boat’s sternsheets, romance and thrift whispered in him to hang on and take the boat on board. For he knew wherever women entered into the transactions of men that peril and pelf as well entered hand in hand.
And aboard came the woman, the peril and the pelf—Leoncia, the rifles, and a sack of money—all in a scramble; for, the wind being light, the captain had not bothered to stop way on the schooner.
“Glad to welcome you on board, sir,” Captain Trefethen greeted Francis with a white slash of teeth between his smiling lips. “But who is this man?” He nodded his head to indicate Henry.
“A friend, captain, a guest of mine, in fact, a kinsman.”
“And who, sir, may I make bold to ask, are those gentlemen riding along the beach in fashion so lively?”
Henry looked quickly at the group of horsemen galloping along the sand, unceremoniously took the binoculars from the skipper’s hand, and gazed through them.
“It’s the Jefe himself in the lead,” he reported to Leoncia and her menfolk, “with a bunch of gendarmes.” He uttered a sharp exclamation, stared through the glasses intently, then shook his head. “Almost I thought I made out our friend Torres.”
“With our enemies!” Leoncia cried incredulously, remembering Torres’ proposal of marriage and proffer of service and honor that very day on the hacienda piazza.
“I must have been mistaken,” Francis acknowledged. “They are riding so bunched together. But it’s the Jefe all right, two jumps ahead of the outfit.”
“Who is this Torres duck?” Henry asked harshly. “I’ve never liked his looks from the first, yet he seems always welcome under your roof, Leoncia.”
“I beg your parson, sir, most gratifiedly, and with my humilius respects,” Captain Trefethen interrupted suavely. “But I must call your attention to the previous question, sir, which is: who and what is that cavalcade disporting itself with such earnestness along the sand?”
“They tried to hang me yesterday,” Francis laughed. “And to-morrow they were going to hang my kinsman there. Only we beat them to it. And here we are. Now, Mr. Skipper, I call your attention to your head-sheets flapping in the wind. You are standing still. How much longer do you expect to stick around here?”