DON GERONIMO sat at supper with Sergeant Olivera in the mission kitchen, as on another night more than two months before. The long whip was hanging in its place beside the door, the hams' and bacon were dim in the slow-moving smoke among the dark beams. Magdalena sat opposite her thin-visaged, bearded husband, proud of his handsome carriage, his erect shoulders, his commanding eye. Truly, if Don Geronimo had not been born caballero he had made one of himself, and that of the first.
Magdalena was as neat and comely as it was her customary habit to be, a yellow kerchief with scarlet crescents binding back her fine dark hair. Her youthful, plump arms were bare to the elbows; in unconscious grace she leaned them on the cloth, her slender brown hands clasped restfully.
Sergeant Olivera was the same as yesterday, as ten years before, as he would be ten years after. A sun-cured man, brown and grey, enduring as oak, tireless as an eagle. His sabre and pistols hung on the post of his chair, his soft grey hat, its broad brim turned up on one side and fastened against
