"You will not stay long. Nobody can get along with Don Madariaga. We
have lost count of his overseers. He is a man who must be killed or
deserted. Soon you will go, too!"
Desnoyers did not doubt but that there was some truth in all this.
Madariaga was an impossible character, but feeling a certain sympathy
with the Frenchman, had tried not to annoy him with his irritability.
"He's a regular pearl, this Frenchy," said the plainsman as though
trying to excuse himself for his considerate treatment of his latest
acquisition. "I like him because he is very serious. . . . That is the
way I like a man."
Desnoyers did not know exactly what this much-admired seriousness could
be, but he felt a secret pride in seeing him aggressive with everybody
else, even his family, whilst he took with him a tone of paternal
bluffness.
The family consisted of his wife Misia Petrona (whom he always called
the China) and two grown daughters who had gone to school in Buenos
Aires, but on returning to the ranch had reverted somewhat to their
original rusticity.
Madariaga's fortune was enormous. He had lived in the field since his
arrival in America, when the white race had not dared to settle outside
the towns for fear of the Indians. He had gained his first money as a
fearless trader, taking merchandise in a cart from fort to fort.
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