Whatever the English guest had said against his need for repose when danger threatened, he had no sooner returned from his bath in fresh habiliments, to find on the table a tasteful spread of preserved fruit, smoking chocolate of fine savour and much thickness, and light pastry, to say nothing of some cold turkey and ham with golden hued corn bread, then he did not blame his host for the insistence on overruling him. Lighting a cigarette, he reclined on the couch-chair, and soon sank into a blessed state of physical enjoyment less and less appreciated, of course, as his overtasked brain and frame lent themselves gratefully to slumber.
When he awoke, a couple of hours only thence, he saw the table again covered with eatables, but a great deal more substantial. It was laid for three. A couple of superior servants were just finishing the decoration with vases of spring flowers, and so deftly doing their work, that it was not any noisy blunder on their part that had aroused him. He did not like to inquire of them who were going to be his guests. Luckily, he was not long left on tenterhooks.
The door opened, and don Benito, showing himself, made way courteously for Oliver to precede him. The American was clad in a Mexican dress, jingling and shining with silver buttons, and really would have made many a black-eyed damsel's heartache at a dance in his new but not altogether unaccustomed array.
With fine forethought, Benito had arranged to take supper--or whatever name this midnight meal deserved--with his old friend and the other deliverer of his beloved daughter.
After appeasing hunger--for Gladsden's had revived, and Oregon Ol. never seemed at a loss to eat when anything was on the board--they conferred seriously.
The hacendero had made his servants and the Indians who were truly converts kiss the cross and swear to die for their master--about the only binding oath to impose on such gentry. A hundred of the least dubious were to be clad in a kind of uniform so as to look like soldiers.
"Your friend, our friend, will lead them. These North Americans have persuasive methods and a spirit which converts the timid into _guerreadores_--heroes even, which we do not possess, or we should not be the yearly prey of the Comanches."