Senorita Saved

When he engaged some weeks ago to perform in a rodeo at the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial, Alfredo Cuellar, trim-waisted Mexican cowpuncher, looked forward to a rather dismal time. One would ride one's pony and whoop artificially to the anemic applause of Gringo tourists.

And when he reached the scene, Alfredo found that the magnificent exhibition buildings pictured in the advance publicity were tawdry, flimsy things, jerry-built and incompleted weeks after the show officially opened. The 'Gringos themselves were calling it the Sickly Centennial--a "flop." Alfredo mourned for obdurate, passionate Mexico and frowned at his pony's ears. He might go home, tomorrow, or the next day ....

Last week, Alfredo brightened. The Pope-baiting President of Mexico, Senor Plutarco Elias Calles, has a daughter--ah, such a daughter. Hair and eyes blacker than a moonless night; a pale, inscrutable, beautiful face from which no amount of contact with the shallow Americanos would erase the stamp of primitive womanhood. There was such a girl once in a bar at Tia Juana, a girl to wring your heart in the dusk. . . . And Senorita Ernestine Calles was coming to see the rodeo. Alfredo polished his pony's bit, and as he shaved one evening he murmured again, "Manana, manana."

There she was in Mayor Kendrick's box at the very edge of the field. Alfredo, made his pony caper and look hard to ride, curvetting, sidling, closer and closer. She was watching a dust-cloud in midfield where one of Alfredo's fellows bestrode a rearing, plunging bronco and waved his hat with bravado. Caramba! Let her look! If she knew horsemanship she must see that the rider was already touching leather. Alfredo sidled nearer still, looking very stern.

Then the dust-cloud contained only the bronco, and it was crossing the field. It was headed straight for the sloe-eyed one's box. Alfredo shot from his saddle; his moment had come. Seizing the frightened girl, he whisked her to him and aside, thrust her behind his own well-trained cayuse, just as a threshing ball of hoofs and bared teeth catapulted through the box-railing and among the overturned chairs. Other cowboys eyed Alfredo enviously as they galloped up to form a cordon of safety around him and Senorita Ernestine.

Then the broncho was roped, mastered, led away. The girl turned those eyes upon her rescuer, thanked him and was gone. As Alfredo jogged off he was exhilarated, but a little sad. That evening he thought again of Mexico. Perhaps he would go home, tomorrow, or the next day.