"You need someone to accompany you, to make interpretations." She looked at him slyly from under dark lashes and smiled.

"I would never learn the language that way."

"Perhaps you would learn other things."

He felt them looking at him. "What about your friend?"

She glanced coldly over her shoulder. "He is not my friend; nor any of them there. I amuse myself with them only." Her glance returned quickly as one of the men rose and came toward their table.

It was Lew Embree. He bumped the next table unsteadily. A two days' beard growth darkened his face; mescal showed in his glazed, watery eyes and in the way his mouth was parted, sticky wet in the corners, loose in his bearded jaw.

The girl refused to look at him.

"Honey, I didn't come to see you, but your friend. When I come for you you'll know it." The sleepy eyes went to Bowers.

"I wondered if you knew your friend Frank was here?"

Bowers hesitated. "Frank who?"

"Frank Rellis."

"I don't know anyone by that name." But he remembered it. As he said it he pictured the two riders through the field glasses and the one on the left with the Winchester; then tying that in with what Flynn had told him before. Frank Rellis. The man who shot Joe Madora. Then Lazair mentioning him.

"Frank told how he knew you and your partner. In Contention, as I recollect."

"I've never met Frank Rellis."

The girl pretended to shudder and shook her head. "That one!"

"Well, he says he knew you and your partner."

"He must be mistaken."

"Frank doesn't say much, so when he does it's something he's sure of 'cause he's had all that silent time to think about it."

"If he's not mistaken then you misunderstood what he said."

"I heard him plain as your face tell Curt that he knew you."

Bowers said nothing and looked at his glass.

"He's over eatin'. He'll be back shortly; why'nt you wait to see him?"

"If I'm still here when he comes then most likely I'll see him."

"He said it was in Contention-"

"Look, I've never met Frank Rellis!" He looked at the man steadily now wondering if he was really drunk, even though it was on his face. The girl was suddenly looking beyond him and now he heard the door and the ching of heavy Mexican spurs. Sergeant Santana stopped at the bar.

Lew Embree looked at him a long moment and then glanced at the girl. "Come on, honey."

"I like it where I am."

"You be nice now."

"Go stick your head in it!"

"Honey, Warren's back there at the table cryin' his eyes out for you."

The girl did not say anything now.

Shaking his head Lew Embree looked at Bowers. "Don't these biddy-bitches get uppity though. She suspects you got more money than Warren, which could be a case." He was standing next to her chair. His hand moved to the cane back rest then idly up to the girl's neck, and suddenly, his fingers gripping the white cotton, he jerked his hand down, ripping the loose-fitting blouse away from her back. She was up out of the chair, screaming, holding the front of the blouse to her breasts, running toward the rear of the mescal shop, past the table where Warren and the others were, trying to dodge an arm that reached for her and caught a shred of material. It pulled her off balance, jerking the front of the blouse from her hands and now she made no attempt to cover herself, standing, cursing Embree with every indecent word she knew before running crying through the rear door.

Warren called to Lew, "She looks like she can't hardly wait!"

Still grinning, Lew Embree looked from Santana to Bowers then turned his back to them indifferently and started for the other table. "For a girl that throws it around like she does," Lew was saying, "she acts awful kittenish."

Bowers watched Embree until he reached the other table, then he looked toward Santana.

"Will you sit here?"

The rurale sergeant pushed back his straw Chihuahua hat, shaking his head faintly. "I will be here only a moment."

Bowers stood and moved to the bar carrying the mescal bottle. "Let me buy you a drink." He said then, "I was wondering what that man's name was."

Santana accepted the bottle that Bowers extended and poured a glass half full. "I've never listened for his name."

"That was something he did to the girl, eh?"

"She had her clothes off in his presence before."

"I had the feeling he did it for my benefit," Bowers said, watching the rurale.

Santana shrugged, then drank. He wiped his mouth and said, "He misses no opportunity to show they have bought these women well. But it makes little difference since the women are bought; it's hardly a winning of their affection."

Bowers said idly, "But it would seem to me to be a matter of principle. I don't know if I could just let these men come in and take over all the women. That's if it was up to me."

Santana was watching the ones at the table. "This is not something that will go on always."

"I should think you'd have enough men that you wouldn't have to stand for such nonsense going on. Those are Lazair's men, aren't they?"

Santana nodded.

"Then you must have about three to one on him."

"We have been instructed to treat him with courtesy."

Bowers half smiled. "Where do you draw the line? If a guest at your home made advances to your wife, would courtesy hold you back from dealing with him?"

"There is a difference."

"You live in Soyopa. The women are yours, of your land. Then these come and take whatever they like and make themselves comfortable. Was it your lieutenant who said this about courtesy?"

Santana nodded. "That one."

"He hasn't been to Lazair's camp, has he?"

"No."

"I'm told there were some women there. Not like the ones that work here, but good girls, from another pueblo. Alaejos, somewhere like that. What they were doing to them I've heard called many things…but courtesy wasn't one of them."

"Where did you hear this?"

"From one of the men of the village. Now I'm not sure, that might have been a time ago and now they are gone."

Santana sipped his mescal; he was thinking, and it was even something physical, tightening his swarthy face. His eyes were small in his face and now they did not show as he squinted to make things plainer in his mind.

"When I heard that," Bowers said, "I couldn't help but be angry myself; but one man cannot do anything against all of them."

"What of your companion?"

"That would make two of us."

"No, I meant where is he?"

Bowers shrugged. "Probably at the house of the alcalde, or visiting others. He also cannot understand this immunity that seems to have been granted them."

"Lieutenant Duro-"

"Yes, Lieutenant Duro…who is forced to associate with them only when paying the scalp bounty. The rest of the time he is alone in his comfortable house with little to do-"

"Not always alone."

"But while you perform his work. I have heard that," Bowers said.

"What?"

"Everyone speaks of it. You're modest. It's said about that Duro would accomplish nothing if it were not for Sergeant Santana."

"That is said?"

"You are modest; for you know this better than I. How often does he come from his house into the sun?"

"Little."

"Perhaps for pleasure, but never for work, eh?"

Santana nodded, thoughtfully.

"It seems such a waste. Yet he is the one who insists that you be courteous to the men of Lazair. Has he led you against the Apaches?"

"That one? That son of the great whore would sooner cut his arm off."

Bowers said, sympathetically, "You can find little respect for a man like that."

"None. Just the sight of him is an abuse."

Bowers said nothing, watching him.

Santana said, "In the army it isn't uncommon to find men such as he. I know that for I have served. As a boy I was present at the battle of Cinco de Mayo, where at Puebla, under Zaragoza and this same Diaz we now have, we defeated the army of France."