He pulled up and stared wide-eyed at Valencia, who had no smile with which to greet him but swore instead a pensive oath.
"Dios! Is it for a wager that you travel thus ?" grinned Manuel, abominably comfortable upon a great, sorrel horse that pranced all round Valencia in its anxiety to be upon its way home.

"Look you, Valencia! Since you are travelling, you had best go and tell the padres to make ready the sacrament for your gringo friend, that blue-eyed one; for truly his time on earth is short!" Valencia, at that, looked up into Manuel's face and smiled in spite of the pain in his feet and the emptiness in his stomach.
"Does it please you, then, Valencia?
All night I rode to bear a message to that blue-eyed one who thinks himself supremo in all things; a challenge from Don Jose, to fight a duelo if he is not a coward; so did Jose write.

'Unless you are afraid to meet me'-- and the vanity of that blue-eyed one is great, Valencia.

Of a truth, the man is loco.

What think you, Valencia?
He had the right to choose the weapons--and Jose believed that he would choose those pistols of which you make so much talk.