"I'm a damsel in distress waiting for a rescuing knight with a white banner and a milk-white steed--" went on the laughing voice in stilted declamation.
"Sorry, friend, but my cayuse is a roan, and I never carried a white flag yet. You pick the wrong colors."
Whereupon he began the chanting of a war song, with an eye stealthily on the barred window.
_Hurrah! Hurrah! For southern rights, hurrah! Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag That bears the single star!_
"Oh! _I_ know that!" the voice was now a hail of recognition. "Cap Pike always sings that when he's a little 'how-came-ye-so'--and _you're_ a Johnny Reb!"
"Um! twice removed," assented the man by the wall, "and you are a raiding Yank who has been landed in one of our fortresses with only one shirt to her back, and that one borrowed."
He had a momentary vision of two laughing gray eyes beside the olla, and the girl behind the bars laughed until Merced let the grindstone halt while she cast a glance towards the house as if in doubt as to whether three feet of adobe wall and stout bars could serve instead of a dueña to foolish young Americans who chattered according to their foolishness.
There was an interval of silence, and then the girlish voice called again.
"Aren't you the new Americano from California, for the La Partida rancho?"
"Even so, O wise one of the borrowed garment." The laugh came to him again.
"Why don't you ask how I know?" she demanded.
"It is borne in upon me that you are a witch of the desert, or the ghost of a dream, that you see through the adobe wall, and my equally thick skull. Far be it for me to doubt that the gift of second sight is yours, O seventh daughter of a seventh daughter!"
"No such thing! I'm the only one!" came the quick retort, and the young chap in the shade of the adobe shook with silent mirth.
"I see you laughing, Mr. Johnny Reb, you think you caught me that time. But you just halt and listen to me, I've a hunch and I'm going to prophesy."
"I knew you had the gift of second sight!"
"Maybe you won't believe me, but the hunch is that you--won't--hold--the job on these ranches!"
"What!" and he turned square around facing the window, then laughed. "That's the way you mean to get even for the 'seventh daughter' guess is it? You think I can't handle horses?"