"Enough, Don Juan!" he cried, laying down the guitar with a thump. "This ends our evening's entertainment!"
After paying and thanking the stolid musicians Phil joined Bud and the pair adjourned to their room where, in the intervals of undressing, Phil favored the occupants of the adjoining apartments with an aria from "Beautiful Doll."
But for all such nights of romance and music there is always a morning afterward; and a fine tenor voice set to rag-time never helped much in the development of a mine. Though Bud had remained loyally by his friend in his evening serenade he, for one, never forgot for a moment that they were in Fortuna to work the Eagle Tail and not to win the hearts of Spanish-Mexican _señoritas_, no matter how attractive they might be.
Bud was a practical man who, if he ever made love, would doubtless do it in a perfectly businesslike way, without hiring any string bands. But at the same time he was willing to make some concessions.
"Well, go ahead and get your sleep, then," he growled, after trying three times in the morning to get his pardner up; "I'm going out to the mine!"
Then, with a saddle-gun under his knee and his six-shooter hung at his hip, he rode rapidly down the road, turning out from time to time to let long cavalcades of mules string by. The dead-eyed _arrieros_, each with his combined mule-blind and whip-lash swinging free, seemed to have very little on their minds but their pack-lashings, and yet they must be three days out from Moctezuma.
Their mules, too, were well loaded with the products of the hot country--_fanegas_ of corn in red leather sacks, oranges and fruits in hand-made crates, _panoches_ of sugar in balanced frames, long joints of sugar-cane for the _dulce_ pedlers, and nothing to indicate either haste or flight.
Three times he let long pack-trains go by without a word, and then at last, overcome by curiosity, he inquired about the _revoltosos_.
"What _revoltosos_?" queried the old man to whom he spoke.
"Why, the men of Bernardo Bravo," answered Bud; "the men who are marching to take Moctezuma."
"When I left Moctezuma," returned the old man politely, "all was quiet--there were no _revoltosos_. Since then, I cannot say."
"But the soldiers!" cried Bud. "Surely you saw them! They were marching to fight the rebels."