"FOR WEAPONS I CHOOSE RIATAS" There must have been a good deal of gossip amongst the vaqueros of the various ranches, as they rode on circle or lay upon their saddle blankets around the evening camp-fires.

As is ever the case when a man is young, handsome, rich, and holds proudly the gold medal which proclaims him the champion of the whole State--the golden disk which many a young vaquero longed to wrest from him in a fair test of skill--there were those who would rather like to see Jose humbled.

True, they would never choose an alien to do the humbling, and the possibility was discussed with various head-shakings amongst themselves.
But there were the Picardo vaqueros stanchly swearing by all the saints they knew that these two gringos were not as other gringos; that these two were worthy a place amongst true Californians.

Could they not see that this Senor Hunter was as themselves?
And he was not more Spanish in his speech and his ways than was the Senor Allen, albeit the Senor Allen's eyes were blue as the lupines, and his hair the color of the madrona bark when it grows dark with age--or nearly the color.

And he could shoot, that blue-eyed one! Valencia, having an audience of a dozen or more one night, grew eloquent upon the prowess of the blue-eyed one.